When it comes to coronavirus, Americans still trust science

For months, President Donald Trump has been contradicting his public health advisers over the response to the coronavirus pandemic.

Over that same time, public health messages about the virus have been shifting. Advice that masks weren’t necessary changed to advice to wear masks. Guidance against mass gatherings was softened in the face of a recent wave of political protests.

Social media fights and news coverage have tended to focus on the maskless-and-angry; on large, risky gatherings; and on harassment of public health officials.

But a New York Times/siena College survey shows a large majority of American registered voters quietly trust the advice of medical experts.

The poll shows that large majorities across the partisan divide trust medical scientists and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, though Democrats are more trusting than Republicans overall. The levels are similar to those found in opinion surveys earlier in the pandemic, and in the years before it, suggesting that the politicization of the coronavirus response has not demolished the credibility of science.

In the Times survey, 84% of voters said they trusted medical scientists to provide reliable information about the virus, with 90% of Democrats and 75% of Republicans trusting the experts. Overall trust in the CDC was 77% — 71% among Republicans and 83% among Democrats.

Jonathon Ferguson, a real estate agent in Central Michigan and self-described conservative, says he has conservative friends who have resisted public health measures as infringements of their rights. But he has largely supported the actions of his governor, Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat who imposed control measures over the objections of Trump.

“When you have something that is so out of the box — a new global pandemic — it’s kind of like, ‘Let’s get ahold of this and see where we are at,’ ” said Ferguson, 39. “Our rights aren’t going anywhere.”

Even as trust in government and many professionals has been declining for decades, Americans’ trust in medical experts has tended to remain high. Gallup has shown consistently high rankings for nurses, doctors and pharmacists on measures of “honesty and ethics.”

Five states hit record daily highs for coronavirus cases on Saturday, and Vice President Mike Pence canceled planned campaign events in hard-hit areas as the virus surged in the U.S. South and West, halting economic reopening plans.

The number of confirmed U.S. cases of the virus rose to more than 2.5 million Saturday, according to a Reuters tally. Over 125,000 Americans have died of COVID-19, the illness caused by the virus, the highest known death toll of any country in the world.

Florida on Saturday morning reported 9,585 new infections in the last 24 hours, a record for a second day, while Arizona recorded 3,591 new cases of COVID-19, matching its prior record on Tuesday.

Pence canceled planned events to campaign for President Donald Trump’s reelection this week in Florida and Arizona out of “an abundance of caution,” campaign officials told

Reuters.

Meanwhile, Nevada on Saturday disclosed 1,099 new cases, double its previous record, and South Carolina and Georgia reported 1,604 and 1,990 new infections, respectively, also marking new daily highs.

The surge in cases has been most pronounced in a handful of Southern and Western states that reopened earlier and more aggressively, serving as a warning to the potentially illusory nature of any perceived progress in controlling the virus.

For the third consecutive day, new U.S. cases rose by more than 40,000 Saturday. The United States has now seen 2.52 million cases since the pandemic began, according to the Reuters tally.

The worsening contagion in some parts of the United States has created a split-screen effect, with New York and its neighboring Northeastern states, which were hit hardest initially, reporting declining cases and forging ahead with reopening plans.

Kami Kim, director of the Division

of Infectious Disease and International Medicine at the University of South Florida, said her state’s leaders claimed victory too soon after lockdowns were lifted starting in early May, while giving off conflicting messages on face coverings by not wearing masks themselves.

“It was just complete denial by a huge swath of the politicians,” she said, predicting that the state may need to shut down again. “Unfortunately, our community still isn’t taking it very seriously. People aren’t wearing masks.”

Washington state Gov. Jay Inslee said Saturday that his state would pause moving into the next stages of opening its economy as cases there rise.

In Texas, a state that was on the vanguard of letting people get back to work, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott ordered bars across the state to close and required restaurants to limit indoor seating — acknowledging that in hindsight, he had opened bars too soon.