Americans on the right half of the political spectrum have tended to underplay the risk of Covid-19. They have been less willing to wear masks or avoid indoor gatherings and have been more hesitant to get vaccinated.
These attitudes are part of a larger pattern in which American conservatives are often skeptical of public-health warnings from scientists — on climate change, air pollution, gun violence, school lunches and more. In the case of Covid, Republican politicians and media figures have encouraged risky behavior by making false statements about the virus.
To many liberals, Covid has become another example of the modern Republican Party’s hostility to facts and evidence. And that charge certainly has some truth to it. Yet the particular story with Covid is also more complicated — because conservatives aren’t the only ones misinterpreting scientific evidence in systematic ways. Americans on the left half of the political spectrum are doing it, too.
That’s a central finding from a survey of 35,000 Americans by Gallup and Franklin Templeton. It finds that both liberals and conservatives suffer from misperceptions about the pandemic — in opposite directions. “Republicans consistently underestimate risks, while Democrats consistently overestimate them,” Jonathan Rothwell, Gallup’s principal economist, and Sonal Desai, a Franklin Templeton executive, write.
The mistakes people make
More than one-third of Republican voters, for example, said that people without Covid symptoms could not spread the virus. Similar shares said that Covid was killing fewer people than either the seasonal flu or vehicle crashes. All of those beliefs are wrong, and badly so. Asymptomatic spread is a major source of transmission, and Covid has killed about 15 times more Americans than either the flu or vehicle crashes do in a typical year.
Democrats, on the other hand, are more likely to exaggerate the severity of Covid. When asked how often Covid patients had to be hospitalized, a very large share of Democratic voters said that at least 20 percent did. The actual hospitalization rate is about 1 percent.
Democrats are also more likely to exaggerate Covid’s toll on young people and to believe that children account for a meaningful share of deaths. In reality, Americans under 18 account for only 0.04 percent of Covid deaths.
It’s true that some of these misperceptions reflect the fact that most people are not epidemiologists and that estimating medical statistics is difficult. Still, the errors do have a connection to real-world behavior, Rothwell told me.
Republicans’ underestimation of Covid risks helps explain their resistance to wearing a mask — even though doing so could save their own life or that of a family member. And Democrats’ overestimation of risks explains why so many have accepted school closures — despite the damage being done to children, in lost learning, lost social connections and, in the case of poorer children, missed meals.
The states with the highest share of closed schools are all blue states: California, Oregon, Maryland, New Mexico, Hawaii, Nevada, Massachusetts and New Jersey. “I think in many ways it’s based on the fact that these voters are misinformed about the risks to young people and they’re misinformed about the risks generally,” Rothwell said.
Information can help
The reasons for these ideological biases aren’t completely clear, but they are not shocking. Conservatives tend to be more hostile to behavior restrictions and to scientific research. And liberals sometimes overreact to social problems. (A classic example was the overpopulation scare of the 1960s and ’70s, when people on the left wrongly predicted that the world would run out of food.)
Covid, of course, represents a real crisis, one that has already killed more than a half-million Americans and continues to kill more than 1,000 per day. As in the case of many crises, underreaction has been the bigger problem with Covid — but it has not been the only problem.
Perhaps the best news from the Gallup survey was that some people were willing to revisit their beliefs when given new information. Republicans took the pandemic more seriously after being told that the number of new cases was rising, and Democrats were more favorable to in-person schooling after hearing that the American Academy of Pediatrics supports it.
“That’s very encouraging,” Rothwell told me. “It’s discouraging that people didn’t already know it.”
THE LATEST NEWS
Atlanta Shootings
The fatal shootings of eight people in Georgia — six of them Asian women — have set off a new wave of fear among Asian-Americans.
“Everything that’s been swirling around, all this anti-Asian sentiment has come to a head with the worst possible thing,” one Atlanta resident, Alex Wan, said.
“A good, godly woman,” a politically conservative Army veteran and six others: Here’s what we know about the victims.
The man charged in the shooting told the authorities that he was motived by a “sexual addiction” and denied that the attacks were hate crimes. But investigators said that they had not yet ruled out racial bias as a motivating factor.
President Biden called the surge in “brutality” against Asian-Americans “very, very troubling.” Vice President Kamala Harris, the first woman and the first Asian-American to hold the office, said the killings reflected “the issue of violence in our country.”
The Virus
The E.U. proposed a Covid certificate that would allow residents to travel freely across the bloc if they had been vaccinated, tested negative or could prove that they had recovered from the virus.
The World Health Organization and the head of the European Commission urged European countries to use the AstraZeneca vaccine and expressed confidence that it was safe.
A majority of people who recover from Covid remain shielded from the virus for at least six months, a study found.
Americans will have until May 17 to file their federal taxes because of the pandemic.
Politics
The House voted to renew the Violence Against Women Act. Senate Republicans object to new provisions that would make it harder for domestic abusers to buy guns.
The House voted to award congressional gold medals to police officers who protected the Capitol during the Jan. 6 attack. Twelve Republicans voted no.
Will Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s scandals pave the way for New York City’s first female mayor?
Other Big Stories
Scientists grew mouse embryos inside an artificial womb, raising the possibility that other animals — even humans — could someday be cultured outside a living uterus.
A new intelligence report warned of the rising threat of militias and white supremacists in the U.S.
The Federal Reserve suggested it would keep interest rates low for years.
A Japanese court ruled that the country’s failure to recognize same-sex marriages was unconstitutional, a possible step toward legalization.
Opinions
Charles Blow, Gail Collins and Farhad Manjoo have columns.
Morning Reads
Long overdue: In 1957, Betty Diamond checked out a collection of Paul Bunyan tall tales from her local library. She returned it last month.
Lives Lived: James Levine was the guiding maestro of New York’s Metropolitan Opera for more than 40 years, until allegations of sexual abuse ended his career in 2017. He died at 77.
ARTS AND IDEAS
Pop music’s evolving sound
Most pop songs since the 1960s have followed roughly the same structure: The opening verse sets the scene, building to a climax with the chorus. From there, it repeats.
Now that’s being upended, as Nate Sloan and Charlie Harding, co-hosts of the music podcast “Switched On Pop,” write in The Times. Many hits since the 2010s have eschewed the catchy, rigid structure for something wilder and less predictable. Their article visualizes these changes, charting the structure of pop hits from Billie Holiday to Billie Eilish.
Part of the reason for the move toward less predictability: With the rise of social media platforms and music streaming services like Spotify, songs now have more competition for people’s attention. Many artists want to get to “the hook” of a song faster, delivering a variety of catchy sections — rather than one repeating chorus — to keep people listening.
Streaming has also incentivized pop music to become shorter, in part because people can easily skip around. The average No. 1 hit now clocks in at just over three minutes, down nearly a full minute from the early 2000s. The new brevity is something of a return to the early days of rock ’n’ roll.
PLAY, WATCH, EAT
What to Cook
Make saag paneer, an Indian dish with spinach (or other dark greens) and spices. And check out the most popular recipes on NYT Cooking’s Instagram account.
What to Read
In Brontez Purnell’s new book, “100 Boyfriends,” a rotating cast of narrators shares stories of desire and heartbreak. The critic Parul Sehgal calls it a “hurricane.”
Snuggle
They’re huggable, they’re collectible and they’re taking over: Meet Squishmallows.
Late Night
The hosts got serious about the shootings in Atlanta.
Now Time to Play
The pangrams from yesterday’s Spelling Bee were auditing, daunting and inundating. Here is today’s puzzle — or you can play online.
Here’s today’s Mini Crossword, and a clue: @@@ (three letters).
If you’re in the mood to play more, find all our games here.
Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow. — David
P.S. The word “postfilibuster” appeared for the first time in The Times this week.
You can see today’s print front page here.
Today’s episode of “The Daily” is about the deadly shooting in Atlanta. On “Sway,” Kara Swisher interviews Airbnb’s chief executive, Brian Chesky.
Lalena Fisher, Claire Moses, Ian Prasad Philbrick, Tom Wright-Piersanti and Sanam Yar contributed to The Morning. You can reach the team at [email protected].
Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox.
We and our partners use cookies on this site to improve our service, perform analytics, personalize advertising, measure advertising performance, and remember website preferences.Ok
Home » Analysis & Comment » Covid’s Partisan Errors
Covid’s Partisan Errors
Americans on the right half of the political spectrum have tended to underplay the risk of Covid-19. They have been less willing to wear masks or avoid indoor gatherings and have been more hesitant to get vaccinated.
These attitudes are part of a larger pattern in which American conservatives are often skeptical of public-health warnings from scientists — on climate change, air pollution, gun violence, school lunches and more. In the case of Covid, Republican politicians and media figures have encouraged risky behavior by making false statements about the virus.
To many liberals, Covid has become another example of the modern Republican Party’s hostility to facts and evidence. And that charge certainly has some truth to it. Yet the particular story with Covid is also more complicated — because conservatives aren’t the only ones misinterpreting scientific evidence in systematic ways. Americans on the left half of the political spectrum are doing it, too.
That’s a central finding from a survey of 35,000 Americans by Gallup and Franklin Templeton. It finds that both liberals and conservatives suffer from misperceptions about the pandemic — in opposite directions. “Republicans consistently underestimate risks, while Democrats consistently overestimate them,” Jonathan Rothwell, Gallup’s principal economist, and Sonal Desai, a Franklin Templeton executive, write.
The mistakes people make
More than one-third of Republican voters, for example, said that people without Covid symptoms could not spread the virus. Similar shares said that Covid was killing fewer people than either the seasonal flu or vehicle crashes. All of those beliefs are wrong, and badly so. Asymptomatic spread is a major source of transmission, and Covid has killed about 15 times more Americans than either the flu or vehicle crashes do in a typical year.
Democrats, on the other hand, are more likely to exaggerate the severity of Covid. When asked how often Covid patients had to be hospitalized, a very large share of Democratic voters said that at least 20 percent did. The actual hospitalization rate is about 1 percent.
Democrats are also more likely to exaggerate Covid’s toll on young people and to believe that children account for a meaningful share of deaths. In reality, Americans under 18 account for only 0.04 percent of Covid deaths.
It’s true that some of these misperceptions reflect the fact that most people are not epidemiologists and that estimating medical statistics is difficult. Still, the errors do have a connection to real-world behavior, Rothwell told me.
Republicans’ underestimation of Covid risks helps explain their resistance to wearing a mask — even though doing so could save their own life or that of a family member. And Democrats’ overestimation of risks explains why so many have accepted school closures — despite the damage being done to children, in lost learning, lost social connections and, in the case of poorer children, missed meals.
The states with the highest share of closed schools are all blue states: California, Oregon, Maryland, New Mexico, Hawaii, Nevada, Massachusetts and New Jersey. “I think in many ways it’s based on the fact that these voters are misinformed about the risks to young people and they’re misinformed about the risks generally,” Rothwell said.
Information can help
The reasons for these ideological biases aren’t completely clear, but they are not shocking. Conservatives tend to be more hostile to behavior restrictions and to scientific research. And liberals sometimes overreact to social problems. (A classic example was the overpopulation scare of the 1960s and ’70s, when people on the left wrongly predicted that the world would run out of food.)
Covid, of course, represents a real crisis, one that has already killed more than a half-million Americans and continues to kill more than 1,000 per day. As in the case of many crises, underreaction has been the bigger problem with Covid — but it has not been the only problem.
Perhaps the best news from the Gallup survey was that some people were willing to revisit their beliefs when given new information. Republicans took the pandemic more seriously after being told that the number of new cases was rising, and Democrats were more favorable to in-person schooling after hearing that the American Academy of Pediatrics supports it.
“That’s very encouraging,” Rothwell told me. “It’s discouraging that people didn’t already know it.”
THE LATEST NEWS
Atlanta Shootings
The fatal shootings of eight people in Georgia — six of them Asian women — have set off a new wave of fear among Asian-Americans.
“Everything that’s been swirling around, all this anti-Asian sentiment has come to a head with the worst possible thing,” one Atlanta resident, Alex Wan, said.
“A good, godly woman,” a politically conservative Army veteran and six others: Here’s what we know about the victims.
The man charged in the shooting told the authorities that he was motived by a “sexual addiction” and denied that the attacks were hate crimes. But investigators said that they had not yet ruled out racial bias as a motivating factor.
President Biden called the surge in “brutality” against Asian-Americans “very, very troubling.” Vice President Kamala Harris, the first woman and the first Asian-American to hold the office, said the killings reflected “the issue of violence in our country.”
The Virus
The E.U. proposed a Covid certificate that would allow residents to travel freely across the bloc if they had been vaccinated, tested negative or could prove that they had recovered from the virus.
The World Health Organization and the head of the European Commission urged European countries to use the AstraZeneca vaccine and expressed confidence that it was safe.
A majority of people who recover from Covid remain shielded from the virus for at least six months, a study found.
Americans will have until May 17 to file their federal taxes because of the pandemic.
Politics
The House voted to renew the Violence Against Women Act. Senate Republicans object to new provisions that would make it harder for domestic abusers to buy guns.
The House voted to award congressional gold medals to police officers who protected the Capitol during the Jan. 6 attack. Twelve Republicans voted no.
Will Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s scandals pave the way for New York City’s first female mayor?
Other Big Stories
Scientists grew mouse embryos inside an artificial womb, raising the possibility that other animals — even humans — could someday be cultured outside a living uterus.
A new intelligence report warned of the rising threat of militias and white supremacists in the U.S.
The Federal Reserve suggested it would keep interest rates low for years.
A Japanese court ruled that the country’s failure to recognize same-sex marriages was unconstitutional, a possible step toward legalization.
Opinions
Charles Blow, Gail Collins and Farhad Manjoo have columns.
Morning Reads
Long overdue: In 1957, Betty Diamond checked out a collection of Paul Bunyan tall tales from her local library. She returned it last month.
Lives Lived: James Levine was the guiding maestro of New York’s Metropolitan Opera for more than 40 years, until allegations of sexual abuse ended his career in 2017. He died at 77.
ARTS AND IDEAS
Pop music’s evolving sound
Most pop songs since the 1960s have followed roughly the same structure: The opening verse sets the scene, building to a climax with the chorus. From there, it repeats.
Now that’s being upended, as Nate Sloan and Charlie Harding, co-hosts of the music podcast “Switched On Pop,” write in The Times. Many hits since the 2010s have eschewed the catchy, rigid structure for something wilder and less predictable. Their article visualizes these changes, charting the structure of pop hits from Billie Holiday to Billie Eilish.
Part of the reason for the move toward less predictability: With the rise of social media platforms and music streaming services like Spotify, songs now have more competition for people’s attention. Many artists want to get to “the hook” of a song faster, delivering a variety of catchy sections — rather than one repeating chorus — to keep people listening.
Streaming has also incentivized pop music to become shorter, in part because people can easily skip around. The average No. 1 hit now clocks in at just over three minutes, down nearly a full minute from the early 2000s. The new brevity is something of a return to the early days of rock ’n’ roll.
PLAY, WATCH, EAT
What to Cook
Make saag paneer, an Indian dish with spinach (or other dark greens) and spices. And check out the most popular recipes on NYT Cooking’s Instagram account.
What to Read
In Brontez Purnell’s new book, “100 Boyfriends,” a rotating cast of narrators shares stories of desire and heartbreak. The critic Parul Sehgal calls it a “hurricane.”
Snuggle
They’re huggable, they’re collectible and they’re taking over: Meet Squishmallows.
Late Night
The hosts got serious about the shootings in Atlanta.
Now Time to Play
The pangrams from yesterday’s Spelling Bee were auditing, daunting and inundating. Here is today’s puzzle — or you can play online.
Here’s today’s Mini Crossword, and a clue: @@@ (three letters).
If you’re in the mood to play more, find all our games here.
Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow. — David
P.S. The word “postfilibuster” appeared for the first time in The Times this week.
You can see today’s print front page here.
Today’s episode of “The Daily” is about the deadly shooting in Atlanta. On “Sway,” Kara Swisher interviews Airbnb’s chief executive, Brian Chesky.
Lalena Fisher, Claire Moses, Ian Prasad Philbrick, Tom Wright-Piersanti and Sanam Yar contributed to The Morning. You can reach the team at [email protected].
Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox.
Source: Read Full Article