In thousands of tweets, Pakistanis show empathy for Indians hit by second virus wave

Gulf Today Report

Despite the simmering political tension and on and off flareups on the border, on a social level, there appears to be no animosity between the two nations.

Culturally, the two nations are quite alike, as they share the same food, clothes, language, even Bollywood films.

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So it was not unusual for Pakistanis to rise to the occasion and voice their support for those hit by the coronavirus in India during the second wave.

An artificial intelligence-backed study, which pored over thousands of tweets by Pakistani nationals, said the posts expressed kindness and solidarity for the Indians.

More than 85 per cent of the tweets posted about the COVID crisis in India from Pakistan were supportive.

Most tweets were posted by Pakistanis between 21 April and 4 May, according to a Pakistani TV channel report.

The research found that over 85 per cent of the tweets on the virus cases in India that were from Pakistan were supportive, according to Indo-Asian News Service.

The team of experts at Carnegie Mellon University was led by Ashique KhudaBukhsh. It based their study on 300,000 tweets.

Pakistanis expressed supportive sentiments towards their Indian neighbours under a severe second coronavirus wave.

The team took into account the tweets with the top trending hashtags including #IndiaNeedsOxygen and #PakistanStandsWithIndia.

Of these, 55,712 tweets came from Pakistan, 46,651 from India and the remaining were posted from the rest of the world.

Some people were saying the emotional outpouring was natural as Pakistan also was suffering from a wave of virus infections.