Less than one in 10 Americans describe the current state of the COVID-19 pandemic as a ‘serious crisis,’ according to a recent Axios poll.
The latest poll, published Tuesday, also found that about three in four respondents said it was a ‘manageable problem’ and one in six feel it isn’t a problem at all.
Of 1,043 respondents, nine percent – about 93 people – said they would characterize the current COVID status quo as a ‘crisis,’ with Democrats five times as likely (16 percent) to call it such compared to three percent of Republican respondents.
Three percent of Democrats said COVID-19 is currently ‘not a problem at all’ compared to 31 percent of Republicans, the poll found.
The majority of respondents took the middle road, with 73 percent of everyone polled – 66 percent Republicans and 81 percent Democrats – saying that coronavirus was ‘a problem, but manageable’ in the U.S.
The latest wave of the Axios/Ipsos national survey showed a slight increase in respondents’ perception of risk with certain activities such as flying, returning to work in person and attending sports events.
According to Axios, the highest percentage of respondents reported visiting friends and family members outside their homes since the early part of last summer.
The highest portion of respondents – 37 percent – since the outlet began conducting the polls in March 2020 reported that they had returned to their ‘normal,’ pre-COVID routines.
Compared to 51 percent of respondents in early February, just 36 percent of those polled this round supported businesses requiring customers to show proof of vaccination to enter.
For the first time since the quarter-monthly poll launched, less than half of respondents – 44 percent – support their local governments requiring masks in all public places, down from 50 percent in March.
Down from around 65 percent of respondents when the school year first began last fall, 51 percent of those polled supported their local school district requiring students and staff to mask up in the classroom.
Between 54 and 64 percent of respondents said that COVID cases, hospitalization rates and deaths are decreasing in their state.
Cases are increasing in 26 U.S. states, with these recent rises fueled by the BA.2 ‘stealth’ variant, which now makes up 72 percent of active cases, per the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Cases are increasing nationwide, as well, with data from Friday reporting an average of 36,204 daily infections – a 25 percent jump from the previous week.
New York is suffering the largest increase, with cases up 60 percent over the past two weeks in the empire state. Mississippi (57 percent jump in infections over past two weeks), Kansas (41 percent) and Oregon (40 percent) have experienced sharp increases, as well.
Nationally, COVID-related hospitalizations have fallen to an average of 15,000 per day over the past two weeks, the lowest they’ve been since the onset of the pandemic, according to The New York Times.
Deaths are also on the downturn, with around 600 COVID deaths being reported each day – a 75 percent decrease from the peak of the Omicron surge in February.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, said this week that Americans should decide for themselves how they want to deal with the pandemic going forward based on the amount of risk they are willing to accept.
‘There will be – and we’ve said this many times even in our own discussions between you and I, that there will be a level of infection,’ Fauci, director of the National Institutes of Allergies and Infectious Disease (NIAID), told ABC’s This Week on Sunday.
‘This is not going to be eradicated and it’s not going to be eliminated. And what’s going to happen is that we’re going to see that each individual is going to have to make their calculation of the amount of risk that they want to take in going to indoor dinners and in going to functions.’
Per the CDC’s most recent data, 89 percent of American adults have received at least one shot of the COVID-19 vaccine, with 75 percent fully vaccinated.
Nearly half of adults have received an additional booster shot, and a second booster dose became available to those 50 and older earlier this month.
