Despite a surge of COVID-19 cases spreading across the country, despite over a million deaths attributed to the virus worldwide, and despite ever more urgent pleas from public health officials, nurses, and doctors to take the outbreak seriously, some are still questioning the severity of the pandemic.
In Utah, a hospital in Provo reported on Nov. 10 that about five people have tried to gain access to their ICU unit, video cameras in hand, to prove that the surge was a conspiracy. Utah Valley Hospital told KSL that “We have an inordinate amount of phone calls that we’re receiving every day from the community wanting to know, ‘Is your ICU really full?’”
While COVID-19 can impact anyone, the country has been divided on how seriously to take it.
With a contentious election past, and a third wave of the virus hitting rural areas that had previously remained unscathed by the worst impacts of the virus, is it possible to depolarize the public health crisis?
Early in the pandemic, while political polarization existed, it was far less severe.
At the beginning stage of the outbreak, about half of the public saw COVID-19 as a major threat to public health, Alec Tyson, an associate director at the Pew Research Center said. While the number of people that saw COVID-19 as a threat grew overall as the virus progressed through the spring and summer, the partisan gap also grew larger. By July, there was a 39 percentage point difference between the share of Democrats and Republicans who saw the virus as a major threat.
In July, 46% of Republicans saw COVID-19 as a major threat, whereas 85% of Democrats did.
“There’s been a modest increase in perceptions of threat or concern among Republicans, but it’s a far smaller movement than what we’ve seen among Democrats,” Tyson said.
Another area where partisanship grew was perception of public health officials, Tyson said. While in the beginning of the outbreak the majority of people said public health officials had been doing an excellent or good job at dealing with the outbreak, those ratings have since declined, particularly among Republicans. However, “for public health officials, those ratings are still far, far, far less partisan, than the ratings of say the President’s performance on the outbreak,” Tyson said. “We live in a polarized moment in American politics.”
73% of Democrats believed the actions of ordinary Americans had a great deal of impact with how the coronavirus spreads, whereas only 44% of Republicans did.
A growing divide in how to best combat the virus didn’t necessarily mean a failure to follow public health measures, however.
In an August survey, researchers at Pew found that the majority of both Republicans and Democrats said they had worn a mask in stores or businesses either all or most of the time.
In another study, researchers looked at mobility patterns in Republican and Democrat countries by examining GPS data and found that while there was a statistically significant difference (between 11.5 and 15.2 percent increases in visits to places like restaurants), it was not as large as one might expect.
“Yes, there’s important differences. They do seem to be driven by differential beliefs to some extent, but perhaps the partisan differences are not the main driver of these changes in behaviors that we’ve observed,” Levi Boxell, a Ph.D. candidate in economics at Stanford and one of the authors of the study, explained.
He said that economic incentives and the actual health risks in those Republican counties were also important factors.
The onset of fall has also meant the onset of COVID-19 in rural areas, and places that previously avoided the brunt of the pandemic are now inundated with cases.
“This is a national problem, regardless of ideology, and the likelihood that you take it seriously, the severity, significance and potential harm that the virus can do,” said Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania.
Part of the persistent divide is due to a problem Americans have had for a while: information bubbles.
Public health officials could be key to bridging that divide.
“We want to have the public health experts in the venues in which the misinformation has been trafficked. Because then you’re reaching the audience that’s most likely to have heard it,” Jamieson said.
Jamieson explained when the scientific community has a clear voice, and media outlets share that voice, the public does understand their message.
“The voice of science cannot itself reach the public, it has to reach it through channels the public gets its information from and those channels are very influential. If they carry the scientific voice, the public will accept the scientific voice,” Jamieson said.
Another key part of depoliticizing the virus, will be keeping trust in people like Anthony Fauci high. In an interview with Mother Jones, Tom Frieden, former head of the CDC, advocated for allowing public health agencies to be semi-independent from the White House. He told the outlet, “All public health positions have a political component,” but that instituting a system where a CDC position would span beyond any one administration could somewhat insulate them.
The next information battle will be over the vaccine, and making sure people trust its safety and get vaccinated when it’s ready to be distributed.
Jamieson said that people are more likely to trust their own doctors, church leaders, teachers, and mayors and these local voices can all help distribute accurate information and help convince people to get vaccinated when the time comes. State officials who act in ways consistent with scientific consensus will also play an important role.
Until the vaccine comes out though, people must work to minimize the infection, hospitalizations and deaths.
“The likelihood that we’re going to do that is a function of the experience that people have with COVID, and their belief in the experience that is happening around them,” Jamieson said.
“And the question is will they? And my belief is yes, they will.”