A majority of Americans believe the coronavirus is a real threat but don’t necessarily believe the people telling them about it, a new poll conducted for WTOP suggests — neither the administration, nor the media.
A national poll produced by Heart+Mind Strategies for WTOP between March 18 and March 19 found that almost three-quarters (73%) of Americans perceive the coronavirus as a real threat.
“I know early on we saw those figures much lower, as the effects hadn’t hit home yet, said Erin Norman, senior solutions consultant at Heart+Mind Strategies in Reston, Virginia.
“Now that a good chunk of the country is under some form of social distancing or lockdown, people are starting to kind of say, ‘OK, this is a big threat.'”
Generation Z — 18-to-22-year-olds — was significantly less likely to think of the pandemic as a threat than other age groups. Only 60% of Generation Z members polled see it as a real threat.
“40% think it’s overblown,” said Norman, “and you can see that anecdotally where you see the stories of spring break going on as planned and bars being packed.”
When the poll went deeper, they found Generation Z was much more likely to feel surprised and confused about the messages coming out of the government. They also have significantly less trust for a variety of institutions ranging from government to the media.
Behavior shifts
We are all changing how we live our lives because of the coronavirus threat.
Over 80% of those polled said they have changed or canceled their dinner plans, socializing or travel plans as a result of the emergency. But they are compensating with the help of technology: 42% of Americans have increased their use of video calls from home.
The survey showed that while Generation Z might not be taking the crisis as seriously as a whole, they are still changing their behaviors like the rest of the population.
Partisanship in a crisis
There persists a partisan divide on the seriousness of the coronavirus situation.
“34% of Republicans believe the crisis is overblown, compared to just 15% of Democrats,” said Norman. “Interestingly, 36% of Independents believe it’s overblown. So, Independents are sort of leaning toward Republicans on that front.”
The one area they saw the political parties coming together is when the asked if the crisis was doing more to unify or divide people.
“42% said it was unifying people. Just 32% said it was dividing people more,” said Norman. “Republicans and Democrats were in agreement that this was bringing people together. Independents were the ones who were more likely to say they didn’t see any difference.”
To back up those numbers, over half of Americans (52%) have increased “human connection” behaviors such as reaching out to friends and family, checking in on neighbors and delivering groceries to friends, family or neighbors.
Trust issues
One area where the poll showed a big problem is in trusting those who give us information about the crisis.
“The CDC and the World Health Organization do OK, but only OK,” said Norman; “60% say they have complete or a great deal of trust [in the CDC]. The World Health Organization has 55%, and those are fairly lukewarm trust levels. Everything else dips below.”
“Trust in the federal government, local governments, state governments … are only in the 30 percents. Which means the majority of people either have a little bit of trust or don’t trust those organizations at all,” she said.
Even local health departments and the medical community only had trust levels below 50%.
“I think that we’re going to start to see, or maybe we already have seen, some of the implications of that where people don’t heed warnings because they don’t trust that it’s the right thing to do,” said Norman.
“It’s good that people generally are listening to the CDC and the World Health Organization. But I think this crisis is bringing to light the erosion of trust that’s been occurring in some of our institutions for a long time.”
One interesting thing about these numbers is, for a change, Republicans were the category with the highest trust in the federal government.
“For conventional wisdom, that’s quite a flip,” said Norman. “I wouldn’t be surprised if we were at the beginning of an ideological realignment or at least shift in what some of the platforms are.”
Trust of the media is just as low as trust of government.
“National broadcast news media does the best with 37% saying they trust it. The local news media is the same.”
Economic Impact
Another surprise came when respondents were asked about economic impact.
“I wouldn’t have been surprised if concerns about finances were different based on income level, but they weren’t,” said Norman.
“Concerns about finances were equal across income and education level — which says to me this is going to be a great equalizer in some ways, that no one is going to be safe from the financial impacts.”
While most of Americans (75%) think the personal impact of the crisis will be less than six months, the majority (55%) believe the impact to the economy will last longer.
Sixty percent have already altered plans for large purchases, and almost a quarter have completely canceled those planned purchases.
The poll interviewed 1,000 Americans over the age of 18 on March 18 and 19. The poll has a margin of error of plus/minus 3.1%, at 95% confidence.
