Poll: Seeking virus data, people struggle with trust

WASHINGTON — When John Manley tested positive for COVID-19, his sister urged him to get on the malaria drug that she'd heard Fox News hosts plugging and that President Donald Trump was heralding as a potential “game changer” for fighting the coronavirus.

But Manley, 58, a civilian U. S. Army public affairs officer, was skeptical of using a drug not approved by the Food and Drug Administration for treating the virus and decided it was a gamble not worth taking.

“It caused a huge rift in the family because the science wasn't behind it,” said Manley, who lives in Stuttgart, Germany, and whose wife, Heidi Mathis, also tested positive for the virus after a visit to New York.

Both have since recovered, and the FDA has advised people not to take the drug outside a hospital or clinical trial.

The Manley family squabble highlights an essential question that many Americans are grappling with as they seek out the information they need to stay safe during the country's worst public health crisis in a century: Whom do you trust?

Or, as Manley frames it: “What is being jammed down our throats in our news? Who is talking about these things? Where do you go to actually get something you can believe?”

Sixty- eight percent of Americans say they highly trust the information that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is providing about the virus, 66% trust their doctor or health care provider, and 52% said the same about their state or local government, according to a recent Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll.

But Americans are more skeptical of the coronavirus information they're getting from the media and from family and friends, with 32% saying they have a lot of trust in information provided by each. Only 23% of Americans said they have a great deal or quite a bit of trust in the information that Trump provides on the coronavirus, according to the poll.

In interviews, Americans said the process of consuming, digesting and discerning the credibility of the fire hose of virus information coming from politicians, public health experts and the media — not to mention what t heir family, friends and colleagues are sharing on social media — has become a time- consuming and frequently unsettling process.

Gary Thomas, 71, a retiree from Pueblo, Colorado, and longtime news junkie, has become even more regimented in his consumption. He begins each day at the breakfast table, where he'll spend a couple of solitary hours with his phone and coffee reading the latest virus news.

He'll later put in several more hours watching the latest developments on cable with his wife, while continuing to monitor newspaper apps and social media feeds.

Contrast that with Michele Cody, 45, a technology manager from Riverton, New Jersey. She's become so worn down by the crush of information that she's put herself on a news diet — giving up her early morning newscast and relying more on a roundup of coronavirus news pushed to her inbox.

Retiree Jana Foley decided the best way to get the information she needs out of Trump's briefings, and keep her blood from boiling, is through selective use of the mute button on her TV remote.