In recent months, several cities have rescinded mask mandates and proof-of-vaccination mandates to enter indoor businesses as COVID-19 cases declined. A new poll this week shows how Americans’ attitudes toward the pandemic have changed and whether they still view it as a crisis.
According to a new poll released Tuesday by Axios/Ipsos, less than one in 10 Americans now describes the COVID-19 pandemic as a “crisis.” About three in four respondents described it as a “manageable problem” and one in six said it’s “no problem at all.”
The findings showed that Democrats were five times more likely than Republicans to say COVID-19 is a crisis, 16 percent and 3 percent, respectively. Republicans were 10 times as likely as Democrats to say COVID-19 is no longer a problem, 31 percent and 3 percent, respectively.
Axios explained how overall, their latest poll found that people are more likely to visit friends and family outside their homes since last summer. In addition, less Americans support schools requiring masks and more have returned to “normal,” pre-pandemic lives.
The latest wave of our national survey actually found a slight uptick in people's perceptions of the risks of certain activities, including flying, attending sports events and returning to work. Yet it shows the highest share of Americans visiting friends and family members outside the home — and the lowest rate of social distancing — since the early part of last summer.
Just half of respondents now support schools requiring students, teachers and administrators to wear masks, down from seven in 10 at the start of the school year.
The number of respondents who said their employers are requiring them to wear masks dropped by nearly half over the past month, from 39% to 22%.
37% of respondents said they've already returned to their normal, pre-COVID lives, a new survey high.
The survey asked respondents who have not yet contracted COVID-19 to explain why they think they avoided it. About two-thirds said it was because they'd “been careful and taken precautions,” while one in four said they'd simply been "lucky." Four percent said COVID-19 “isn't really present where they live.”
This Axios/Ipsos Poll was conducted April 8-11 by Ipsos and surveyed 1,043 adults aged 18 or older. The margin of sampling error is plus or minus 3.4 percentage points at the 95% confidence level, for results based on the entire sample of adults.
