Majoritatea americanilor nu le pasă dacă oamenii din jurul lor se măști în public, arată sondajul

Topline

Just 37% of U.S. adults say they’re bothered when people around them in public don’t wear masks, a drop of 35 percentage points since 2020, according to a studiu published Wednesday by Pew Research Group reflecting increasingly relaxed attitudes toward masking among both Republicans and Democrats.

Fapte-cheie

The proportion of people who said they were bothered when others didn’t mask in public fell from 55% in November 2020 to 18% in May 2022 among Republicans and Republican-leaning independents and from 87% to 52% among Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents, Pew found.

However, most Americans are still happy to mask up when businesses ask them to—the proportion of Americans bothered when businesses require masking shifted slightly from 28% in November 2020 to 32% in May 2022, rising from 36% to 52% among Republicans and falling slightly from 20% to 16% among Democrats.

The proportion of Americans who wore masks all or most of the time while in businesses plunged from 61% in January’s omicron surge to 30% in May, reflecting a dramatic decline in Covid-19 spitalizari și decese în perioada respectivă.

Though mask-wearing behavior remains highly polarized, both Republicans and Democrats have masked less since the initial omicron surge subsided—Pew found mask-wearing in businesses fell from 79% in January to 42% in May among Democrats and from 39% to 14% among Republicans.

Pew found extreme division over the question of mask mandates for transport—57% of U.S. adults said masks should be required on planes and public transport, including 80% of Democrats and 29% of Republicans.

Pew surveyed 10,282 U.S. adults from May 2-8.

Contra

O Universitate Quinnipiac sondaj published last month found that just 46% of Americans support an airplane mask mandate, indicating that the public may be close to evenly divided on the issue. Like Pew, Quinnipiac found an extreme partisan split: 80% of Democratic respondents said planes should have mask mandates, compared to 14% of Republican respondents.

Fundalul cheie

Americans’ attitudes toward Covid-19 response measures have relaxed with the emergence of the contagious but mai puțin sever omicron variant and the decline in Covid-19 infections, hospitalizations and deaths since January’s apare. Last month, a federal judge lovit the federal government’s mask mandate for planes and public transport, following which the Transport Security Administration raportate a 50% increase in Covid-19 infections among its workers in just two weeks. It’s also possible that another national Covid-19 surge is in the works: the seven-day average of Covid-19 infections has risen by 152% over the past month, and former Trump Administration pandemic response coordinator Dr. Deborah Birx has a avertizat that a spike in infections across the southern U.S. is likely this summer, based on an analysis of infection patterns in other countries. In April 2021, there was a minor Covid-19 surge in the U.S., followed by a period “where everybody thought it was over” and then another surge in August and September, a pattern which could repeat itself this year, Birx said.

Lecturi suplimentare

“Judge Declares Federal Public Transportation Mask Mandate Unlawful” (Forbes)