The report focuses on public confidence in science in the Covid-19 epidemic, based on two national surveys of 10,139 adults released three weeks ago. A new report from the Pew Research Center suggests that confidence in medical scientists has grown among the U.S. public over the past year. However, this rise has only been seen among people identified as Democrats, with Republicans remaining unchanged since January 2019. The survey shows that since 2001, the faith of both physicians and other scientists has grown steadily. In 2020, 43 percent of adults in the United States say they have enough confidence in medical scientists, while 4 percent say they have a fair amount.
There are more than 1,550,000 cases of Covid-19 in the United States so far, the largest in the world when asked if the proportion of people with the virus is higher, the same, or lower in the United States than in other countries, with about 49 percent of those sampled saying it is high and 31 percent said the same thing. Among Democrats, 66 percent said higher, although this has changed with the education of seven to ten Democrats, including postgraduate degrees. In the case of Republicans, the percentage is about 30 and it was not affected by the level of education. There are also party differences in how people perceive the impact of science on the policy.
When both state and federal governments come up with epidemics and policies, Americans agree on many points, although there are differing views as a party. Nearly six to ten Americans agree that social distance measures are helping to reduce the spread of Covid-19, which Republicans are less likely to say than Democrats (49 percent vs. 49 percent).
The report said, “Most people believe that public health expert evidence is at least fairly influencing government policies on coronavirus, but many feel that such evidence has more impact on state policy (43 percent) than federal policy (226 percent).”
“Coronavirus is viewed through a different lens by biased intersecting public health and policy, according to views on government management. For example, Democrats (about 17 percent) think Republicans almost twice (38 percent) think federal policies to control the coronavirus have been proven by evidence from public health experts. “
More than half (55 percent) of the general public are supportive, up from 44 percent in 2019, Democrats are more supportive than Republicans when it comes to scientists taking an active part in science policy.
