Poll: Few Americans want protections eased
WASHINGTON — Americans remain overwhelmingly in favor of stay-at-home orders and other efforts to slow the spread of the coronavirus, a new survey finds, even as small pockets of attention-grabbing protests demanding the lifting of such restrictions emerge nationwide.
The survey from the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research also finds that a majority of Americans say it won’t be safe to lift social distancing guidelines any time soon, running counter to the choice of a handful of governors who have announced plans to ease within days the public health efforts that have upended daily life and roiled the global economy.
More than a month after schoolyards fell silent, restaurant tables and bar stools emptied, and waves from a safe distance replaced hugs and handshakes, the country largely believes restrictions on social interaction to curb the spread of the virus are appropriate.
Only 12 percent of Americans say the measures where they live go too far. About twice as many people, 26 percent, believe the limits don’t go far enough. A majority of Americans — 61 percent — feel the steps taken by government officials to prevent infections of COVID-19 in their area are about right.
About 8 in 10 Americans say they support measures that include requiring Americans to stay in their homes and limiting gatherings to 10 people or fewer — numbers that have largely held steady over the past few weeks.
“We haven’t begun to flatten the curve yet. We’re still ramping up in the number of cases and the number of deaths,” said Laura McCullough, 47, a college physics professor from Menomonie, Wis. “We’re still learning about what it can do, and if we’re still learning about what it can do, this isn’t going to be the time to let people go out and get back to their life.”
While the poll reveals that the feelings behind the protests that materializedin battleground states such as Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin are held by only a small fraction of Americans, it does find signs that Republicans are, like President Donald Trump, becoming more bullish on reopening aspects of public life.
Just 36 percent of Republicans now say they strongly favor requiring Americans to stay home during the outbreak, compared with 51 percent who said so in late March. But while majorities of Democrats and Republicans think current restrictions where they live are about right, Republicans are roughly four times as likely as Democrats to think restrictions in place go too far — 22 percent to 5 percent.
More Democrats than Republicans, meanwhile, think restrictions don’t go far enough, 33 percent to 19 percent.
“They’ll be lifted, but there are still going to be sick people running around,” said 66-year-old Lynn Sanchez, a Democrat and retired convenience store manager from Jacksonville in Texas, where Gov. Greg Abbott has reopened state parks and plans to announce further relaxations next week. “And we’re going to have another pandemic.”
More than 45,000 people in the United States have died from COVID-19, while 22 million have applied for unemployment benefits since March. It’s that economic cost that has led some governors to follow Trump’s lead and start talking about allowing some shuttered businesses to reopen.
Yet the survey finds that few Americans — 16 percent — think it’s very or extremely likely that areas will be safe enough in a few weeks for the restrictions to be lifted. While 27 percent think it’s somewhat likely, a majority of Americans — 56 percent — say conditions are unlikely to be safe in a few weeks to start lifting restrictions.
“If we try too hard to restart the economy prematurely, there will be waves of reinfection,” said 70year-old retired medical equipment salesman Goble Floyd, of Bonita Springs, Fla. “I don’t think the economy or life will get back to normal until there’s a vaccine. It just seems this is so seriously contagious.”