It’s our second winter of COVID-19, and for the second year in a row, we’re seeing a strange method of tracking cases: candle reviews.
fresh wave of bad reviews for yankee candles pic.twitter.com/1mlandB78I
— drewtoothpaste (@drewtoothpaste) December 21, 2021
In the last month or so, a new spate of one-star reviews has appeared on the Yankee Candle website, all complaining about their candles’ lack of scent.
For the unfamiliar, Yankee Candles are known for their extremely powerful scent. Looking through the company’s website, there’s no small number of negative reviews from people saying their candles smell too strong. So while it is possible that some customers want more smell from their candles, there seems to be a more likely explanation for those claiming there is no scent whatsoever coming from the wax.
Seeing as a loss of taste and smell is a common symptom of COVID-19, the “Christmas Cookie” candle customer saying they “can stand right over it and there is no smell” or the one who says she “can’t smell a thing unless I stick my nose practically right on the flame!” might want to get themselves tested.
There are angry ladies all over Yankee Candle’s site reporting that none of the candles they just got had any smell at all. I wonder if they’re feeling a little hot and nothing has much taste for the last couple days too.
— Terri Nelson (@TerriDrawsStuff) November 24, 2020
Incredibly, this also happened around the same time last year, as you can see from that tweet from science illustrator and cartoonist Terri Nelson.
Last December, the Washington Post wrote:
Nelson’s observation, which generated thousands of retweets and likes on the social media site, read like the punchline of a late-night joke. But it caught the attention of Kate Petrova, a research assistant with the Harvard Study of Adult Development at Bryn Mawr College, who decided to test the hypothesis by scraping roughly 20,000 reviews of the most popular scented and unscented candles on Amazon.
“It is rare, at least in my line of work, to stumble upon an anecdotal observation that can be examined using such vast amounts of easily accessible data,” said Petrova, who stressed that this was a personal project with no relation to her research work.
I couldn’t just walk past this Tweet, so here is some fun #dataviz
Scented candles: An unexpected victim of the COVID-19 pandemic 1/n https://t.co/xEmCTQn9sA pic.twitter.com/tVecEiX5Jc
— Kate Petrova (@kate_ptrv) November 27, 2020
And while this is purely anecdotal, the trends in these “no smell” candle reviews between last holiday season and now also appear to line up with COVID cases with a level of accuracy that’s hard to ignore:
blue line: daily COVID cases in the USA
red line: bad reviews of Yankee Candles on Amazon saying “they don’t have any scent”
sources: google and https://t.co/oZm6ro0E1S pic.twitter.com/8U2XkH0RT4
— eleanor (@zornsllama) December 22, 2021
What else did we see out there today?
- President Biden extended the student loan payment freeze through May 1st. That’s a big weight off of a lot of people’s minds right now but also it would be great if he kept his campaign promise and just canceled that debt already. (via NPR)
- These supply chain issues have officially gone too far, as Mcdonald’s is facing a french fry shortage in Japan. (via BBC)
- These dogs get to pick out their own Christmas presents and I love every single one of them!
It’s #SantaPawsDay – the day all our dogs get to pick their Christmas gift! Sadly, we couldn’t fit them all in, but we hope the pure joy of the ones we did makes you smile!
To all our supporters and everyone who sent a gift, thank you! We hope you have a very Merry Christmas! 💛 pic.twitter.com/lFR7LNdvZG— Dogs Trust Ireland (@DogsTrust_IE) December 21, 2021
- An oral history of Scream on its 25th anniversary. (via The Ringer)
- Happy Matrix Day!
Happy Matrix day! I was commissioned by @alamodrafthouse to make this little short about growing up trans with the iconic movie. pic.twitter.com/u3YRYPu1N8
— Cressa Maeve Beer (@beeragon) December 22, 2021
(image: Christian Mackie from Burst
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