  We present and begin to explore a collection of social data that represents
part of the COVID-19 pandemic's effects on the United States. This data is
collected from a range of sources and includes longitudinal trends of news
topics, social distancing behaviors, community mobility changes, web searches,
and more. This multimodal effort enables new opportunities for analyzing the
impacts such a pandemic has on the pulse of society. Our preliminary results
show that the number of COVID-19-related news articles published immediately
after the World Health Organization declared the pandemic on March 11, and that
since that time have steadily decreased---regardless of changes in the number
of cases or public policies. Additionally, we found that politically moderate
and scientifically-grounded sources have, relative to baselines measured before
the beginning of the pandemic, published a lower proportion of COVID-19 news
than more politically extreme sources. We suggest that further analysis of
these multimodal signals could produce meaningful social insights and present
an interactive dashboard to aid further exploration.
