5 yrs on, 72% Americans say COVID-19 pandemic widened Left-Right gulf, finds latest Pew survey

New Delhi: Most Americans think the COVID-19 pandemic did more to drive the country apart than bring it together, with 72 percent saying it helped widen the Left-Right gulf, eroded trust in institutions, and caused splintering in the information environment.

Five years after the pandemic, a new report by the Pew Research Center says three-quarters of Americans feel the pandemic took a toll on their lives in some way.

Over one million Americans died from COVID, the report says, while millions continue to struggle with long COVID today.

But it adds that most Americans seem to have moved on. Only one in five Americans think that the novel coronavirus is a threat to American health, while over 50 percent of Americans think it is “no longer something we really need to worry about much”.

The report essentially does a deep dive into American attitudes towards work, religion, and technology—and how the pandemic shaped them. The survey, conducted in late October 2024 by the Pew Research Center, also provides some interesting insights into the United States’ pandemic response. It shows that Americans saw the pandemic almost like a blip: a moment in time that laid bare deep sociopolitical fissures that have only worsened.

Two striking findings are that there is certainly a divide when it comes to political ideology: Republicans were more likely to say the coronavirus is now no worse than a cold or flu, while Democrats still feel that the public is not taking the virus seriously.

There also seems to be scepticism towards COVID-19 vaccines, causing health officials to worry that this will cross over into attitudes towards vaccination in general—nearly half of all Americans doubt vaccine safety, the report says.

Significantly, over half of all Americans—54 percent—say the media exaggerated the risks of COVID-19. That said, Americans have a more positive outlook when it comes to their public health system and communities: around 40 percent of Americans say the US would do better with a future health emergency, while 16 percent say they would do worse.

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What changed and what did not

One of the biggest impacts of the pandemic was on work culture: technology really changed the way people approach work. Today, five years on, 32 percent of American workers who can work remotely say they are still doing so.

The internet really carried most of the world through the pandemic—looking back, around half of US adults say the pandemic changed the way they now use technology.

But the pandemic also highlighted the massive gulf when it comes to social disparities and access to technology—it had quite an impact on the American labour market, with Hispanic people, low-wage workers, and young adults hit the hardest.

The digital divide played a huge role in affecting educational outcomes, too. Lower-income teenagers were more likely to report tech-related challenges with schoolwork. In fact, amongst the Americans who say that COVID changed the way they use technology, those with lower incomes are less likely to say these changes made their lives easier.

It also changed the way Americans participated in religious worship. “Like remote work, the share of Americans who report watching religious services online or on TV peaked early in the pandemic, with 36% saying they participated virtually in the last month as of July 2020. And many are still doing so today,” the report says. But the pandemic “did not shake American religion,” it continues. The share of those participating in services has been steady, and the share who say the pandemic had a big impact on their spiritual life is small.

One of the more significant changes, according to the Pew Research Center, is that “Americans’ expectations for the nation’s response to a future health emergency appear somewhat positive compared with the critiques and divisiveness they associate with the coronavirus response”.

Around six in ten Americans think the public health system did a good job handling the pandemic and that it can withstand a future health emergency of this scale.

What probably will not withstand such a huge emergency is the “information environment,” the report finds. Misinformation was rife, and rumours and conspiracy theories abounded. Scientists and public officials were struggling to understand the coronavirus and keep up with rapid mutations, especially during an already confused news environment.

“About two years into the pandemic, 60 percent of US adults said they felt confused as a result of changes to public health officials’ recommendations, and 57 percent said false and misleading information about the virus and vaccines contributed a lot to problems with the response,” the report says.

Cultural impact

In each case, the Pew Research Center’s report finds that Republicans are more likely to dismiss the coronavirus and its risks than Democrats.

The cultural and political impact of the pandemic has also been studied by other agencies.

The National Institute of Health, for example, looked at mask-wearing as a cultural behaviour. “Conservatism was linked to lower mask-wearing, and consistently unfavourable perceptions of mask-wearing,” its report found.

Another study by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology found that wearing masks to protect against coronavirus was directly linked to collectivist versus individualistic outlooks.

In collectivist societies, wearing masks was seen as not only a responsibility or duty but also as a symbol of solidarity—unlike in more individualistic societies like the US, where wearing masks evoked a different kind of cultural response.

Individual Americans’ responses to the pandemic—like whether or not a person wore a mask or took the vaccine—were also seen as strong indicators of their political leanings, which the Pew Research Center’s study also finds. “Democrats also are much more likely than Republicans to say it is crucial for someone with these symptoms to stay home from work or school, wear a mask in crowded settings, and test for COVID-19,” the report says.

(Edited by Radifah Kabir)

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