Americans have always been a fractious lot. Give us a single issue or problem, and we’ll have a whole lot more than a single opinion on the best way to deal with it. Never has this seemed truer than during the COVID-19 pandemic, when the public has argued over everything from vaccines to masks, home schooling to quarantining. Now, a new survey by the Pew Research Center puts some hard numbers on that broad impression.
The survey of more than 10,000 adults was conducted from May 2-8, 2022, and shows not only that Americans remain divided on their approach to and opinions on the pandemic, but also that those divisions break down along some predictable lines—especially political party affiliation and age.
But perhaps the most striking number the Pew researchers announced is one that shows unexpected agreement on a (perhaps too) sunny note: 76% of Americans say that the worst of the pandemic is behind us. However, caseloads are still very high, and an uber-transmissible variant with unprecedented levels of immune evasion is now dominant in the U.S.—so that hopeful outlook warrants some caution. Another point of agreement was that more or less across the demographic board, eight in 10 Americans say their own communities' hospitals and health care facilities have done an excellent or good job of dealing with COVID-19. And when it comes to the importance of K-12 schooling during the pandemic, Americans are in broad accord, agreeing that officials have dropped the ball. Overall, 62% of the public—including 69% of Republicans and 57% of Democrats—say that the U.S. has given too little priority to meeting students’ needs since the virus first started spreading in the early months of 2020, and schools began shuttering.
On other metrics, there was much less consensus. For starters, health authorities, including those from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), are feeling the love from some groups, but not from others. About 72% of Democrats say that public health officials have done a good or excellent job of responding to the pandemic, compared to just 29% of Republicans.
People also held different views on vaccines, which—no surprise—continue to divide us, but less so than all the public shouting over them may suggest. On the whole, 73% of Americans say they are fully vaccinated against COVID-19. Among Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents, the figure is 85%; for Republicans and Republican-leaning independents, it’s 60%. Still, only 55% of Americans overall say that vaccination has been extremely or very effective at limiting the spread of the disease. The rest are more or less evenly divided between saying it has been somewhat effective or had little or no effect. (If you look at the science, there's little debate on this point: a modeling study published just last month estimated that COVID-19 vaccines saved an estimated 20 million lives globally in the first year they were available.)
Partisan differences split wide open when it comes to views on whether protecting public health has received the right amount of attention from the government and health authorities. Among Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents, 46% say it’s received too little priority, 46% say it’s received the right amount, and only 7% say it’s received too much. Among Republicans and Republican-leaning independents, the numbers are 40% for too much attention, 20% for too little, and 38% for the right amount.
The study also found that age represents a major dividing line when it comes to who has contracted the disease. Among adults 18 to 29 years old, 59% say they have tested positive for COVID-19 or are pretty sure they’ve had it, compared to just 26% of adults 65 and older.
As to the near-radioactive debate over masking, the nation is unsurprisingly split down the middle, with 48% saying that masks and social distancing have been extremely or very effective at limiting the spread of the disease, and a near equal amount saying they have had little or no effect. (Again, plenty of research has found in favor of these practices, including a 2021 Nature Communications study finding that people who reported reliably wearing masks were about 62% less likely to contract COVID-19 than those who didn't wear masks.)
Finally, for the person who inevitably takes the most heat or praise in any national emergency like a pandemic—the president—the numbers offer no joy. At the beginning of President Joe Biden’s term, 65% of Americans said they were confident in his ability to deal with the outbreak. Now? Not so much. Only 43% say he is doing a good or excellent job at handling the pandemic, compared to 56% who say his performance has been only fair or poor. Unlike former President Donald Trump, Biden might have avoided contracting the disease so far, but he is decidedly feeling its pain.
TODAY'S CORONAVIRUS OUTLOOK
More than 552 million people around the world had been diagnosed with COVID-19 as of 1 a.m. E.T. today, and more than 6.3 million people have died. On July 6, there were 1.2 million new cases and 2,404 new deaths confirmed globally.
Here's how the world as a whole is currently trending, in terms of cases:
And in terms of deaths:
Here's where daily cases have risen or fallen over the last 14 days, shown in confirmed cases per 100,000 residents:
And here's every country that has reported over 10 million cases:
The U.S. had recorded more than 88.2 million coronavirus cases as of 1 a.m. E.T. today. More than 1 million people have died. On July 6, 197,297 new cases were reported and 734 new deaths were confirmed in the U.S.
Here's how the country as a whole is currently trending in terms of cases:
And in terms of deaths:
Here's where daily cases have risen or fallen over the last 14 days, shown in confirmed cases per 100,000 residents:
All numbers unless otherwise specified are from the Johns Hopkins University Center for Systems Science and Engineering, and are accurate as of July 7, 12 a.m. E.T. To see larger, interactive versions of these maps and charts, click here.
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WHAT ELSE YOU SHOULD KNOW
Sandra Lindsay, a critical care nurse who was the first person in the U.S. to get a COVID-19 vaccine outside of a clinical trial, received the Presidential Medal of Freedom today in a ceremony at the White House for her vaccine advocacy work. “I take seriously the opportunity I have to support public health in underserved communities and communities of color,” she writes in a new essay for TIME. “This is my space.”
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced yesterday that it will allow pharmacists to begin prescribing the drug Paxlovid to people with COVID-19. Previously, only physicians were allowed to prescribe the antiviral drug, which is made by Pfizer. The new clearance comes with limitations : Pharmacists are not permitted to prescribe the drug to patients who cannot present records of recent blood work for pharmacists to review for evidence of kidney or liver problems that could make taking the drug dangerous, for example. Patients must also present a list of all prescription and over-the-counter drugs they are taking in order to avoid any dangerous drug interactions. And, as always with Paxlovid, the drug must be taken within five days of the onset of COVID-19 symptoms.
The running of the bulls festival took place in Pamplona, Spain today for the first time since 2019, reports the Associated Press. The annual celebration was canceled for the last two years because of COVID-19; before the pandemic, the last time the festival was canceled was in the 1930s, during the Spanish Civil War. This year, nearly 1 million people attended the festival in a city that is normally home to just 200,000. A big plus: No one was gored by any of the six bulls that were set running in the streets.
Hong Kong is ending its policy of banning incoming airplane routes on which too many passengers test positive during mandatory testing after arrival, reports the Wall Street Journal. Under the now-discarded policy, if either five passengers or 5% of the travelers on a plane tested positive after arriving in Hong Kong, the airline would be banned from flying that incoming route for five days. Businesses and travelers complained that the policy was unduly isolating Hong Kong as a global commercial hub.
Yesterday, Beijing announced that beginning Monday, it will require people in the city to show proof of vaccination before visiting museums, libraries and some other public places, reports the New York Times. China, which is known for its often draconian COVID-19 restrictions, remains largely sealed off from the rest of the world, and the new move is seen as a bid to increase vaccination rates even higher than the reported 87% of the country that has already had its shots, before slowly reopening its borders to outsiders. The government is especially seeking to increase vaccine rates among the elderly, who lag behind other groups due, in part, to fears over the safety of domestically made vaccines.
Thanks for reading. We hope you find the Coronavirus Brief newsletter to be a helpful tool to navigate this very complex situation, and welcome feedback at coronavirus.brief@time.com. If you have specific questions you'd like us to answer, please send them to covidquestions@time.com.
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Today's newsletter was written by Jeffrey Kluger and edited by Mandy Oaklander.
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