No one I know has lived through a pandemic before. Not in this way, in digitally bonded communities, with pixelated spectres of our friends and colleagues. Even in writing this, the right tone is hard to find. How does anyone strike the right balance between being insightful and being candid about the uncertainty that everyone feels? Everything I do, from the jokes I make on Twitter to silly cat photos I send people, has an undercurrent of fear.

There’s no The Wirecutter review for “Best Way to Survive a Pandemic” (I mean, they’re trying), and there’s no Zoom face filter for hiding tears on a status call. I’ve tried my best to use my privilege—computer-knowledge, internet and social listening skills—to find tools that can somehow soothe.

Weeks of research have led me to only one conclusively uplifting thing: Google Trends.

My original intention, truth be told, was to find points of certainty in people’s online interests. I was sure people were going to be Googling sweatpants and loungewear at higher rates.

I was very wrong. Looks like everyone has a stockpile from the holidays, or is wearing real pants to Zoom meetings. But I started to think about how people are using search engines to cope with the uncertainty in this climate.

I first looked into food banks, because I was researching how to donate locally. (The answer is here.)

There’s a massive spike outdoing the standard Thanksgiving donation drive. The interest is probably two-fold, from folks looking to donate and folks looking to access their food bank after losing their livelihoods or other resources. That’s not a totally scientific guess, so I dug deeper into these numbers and found the top related “Food Bank” topics in the past 30 days:

But on March 17th, for one day, worrying about our collective welfare surpassed the standard self-preservation instinct.

Frankly, nothing can guarantee that they’ll get that close again. Maybe we’ve moved beyond asking if anything will be ok, and Google Trends doesn’t show how our questions will evolve.

I don’t have any advice on how to prepare for the future, but what we do in the present should require us to be thoughtful about our collective needs and how we can best support each other.

I’m also, personally, moved by this particular spike in interest—and not just because I love this song.

It’s my way of asking you to call someone, anyone you love, and kiss them through the phone.

-Angely Guevara