Changes in opinion
Interesting. As the virus numbers go up, the taking it seriously numbers go down.
In the face of the coronavirus worsening across the U.S. and reordering the daily life of millions of Americans, fewer people view the pandemic as a real threat, according to a new NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll.
Just about 56% of Americans consider the coronavirus a “real threat,” representing a drop of 10 percentage points from last month. At the same time, a growing number of Americans think the coronavirus is being “blown out of proportion.”
The differences between political parties are stark, with a majority of Republicans saying it is overblown and the vast majority of Democrats considering it a legitimate threat.
A virus doesn’t care what your political affiliation is.
The result is that under half of USians are taking the precautions we’re told to take.
In February, a little more than a quarter of U.S. adults believed the coronavirus was being blown out of proportion. Now, that number has risen to nearly 40% of respondents.
Pollsters found that both shifts are largely driven by changes in opinion by Republicans. For instance, 72% of Republicanssaw the coronavirus as a real threat in early February, but that figure has now plummeted to 40% of Republicans now believing the deadly virus is a serious menace.
Let me guess. That’s because the worse it is the worse Trump looks, and they can’t have that.
The odd thing is this is happening just as Trump (and, not coincidentally, Fox News) is starting to take it seriously.
I’m trying to tune my estimations to the degree of problem this represents. I kind of want to encourage them to totally PWN the LIBs by having spiteful snot frolics in their megachurches. But I know that’s not very nice.
Not to downplay the Fox News effect here, but another influence is that virus cases are manifesting mostly in cities and other densely populated areas, which tend to skew Democratic. If you’re a Democrat, you’re more likely to know someone who was exposed, more likely to be under lockdown or work-from-home or other restrictions, etc.
For a lot of Republicans, life really is going on as normal. For now. Sadly, the virus probably is in many of those rural red state areas and spreading freely due to the lack of precautions, but they won’t see the evidence of it until it’s mostly too late.
As we take more drastic measures to contain the virus — and the news focuses more on the pandemic — it makes sense that more people are going to think we are overreacting. Those numbers go up as life gets more personally inconvenient; down when someone you know gets sick. The spread between Republicans and Democrats, however, will have a different explanation.
And back up when that someone gets better, because that means it isn’t really a danger. Because if this one random person got better, everyone will get better.
The sample was March 13-14, when the White House was in full dismissal mode and focused on the stock market. I would guess the numbers would already look very different, but in some parts of the US it is clearly too late.