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Five years after the devastating and deadly effects of the Covid pandemic swept the U.S., most Americans say they still trust information from the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The findings also come as Republicans have spent years ripping and questing the organizations.
Of the more than 1,000 adult participants, 57 percent reported that they have a fair amount or great deal of trust in information provided by the NIH, according to a Tuesday survey from Axios and Ipsos. Roughly 40 percent do not trust the institute.
While a decline in trust in the lead government agency for infectious disease response has been previously reported, 62 percent of people surveyed said they trust the CDC’s findings. Although, it’s a drop of 26 percent from the total before the pandemic.
Respondents were also asked about how much of a risk Covid or other respiratory disease outbreaks were to their health, with the majority reporting there was a small or moderate risk. They also said there was a small or no risk of measles, tuberculosis and other diseases that are currently affecting residents in 12 states.
However, respiratory disease outbreaks were listed No. 4 of the list of threats to American public health, and they said they either strongly disagreed or somewhat disagreed that the U.S. was adequately prepared to respond to another widespread health crisis.
The majority said that the Covid pandemic had not caused them to rethink their political leanings or to become more engaged in politics. As to whether the virus is harmless, the majority “somewhat” disagreed — but most said it had changed the lives of Americans forever.
The study was conducted between the end of last month and the first week of March.
Recent CDC data showed that Covid deaths had been trending up since late last year, with percentages of death due to the viral illness currently the highest in Minnesota and Virginia. However, test positivity, emergency room visits and hospitalizations are all down. Covid continues to be a leading cause of death.
When it comes to getting information about health topics such as Covid, more than half of respondents said they did not trust information from President Donald Trump and billionaire Elon Musk. Roughly 66 percent said they had no or not very much trust for information about health topics from newly-confirmed Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Notably, a poll from health policy organization Kaiser Family Foundation said in January that Republicans were twice as likely to trust Kennedy as they were the CDC and Food and Drug Administration. A previous poll from the international online research data group YouGov found Democrats were far more likely than Republicans to trust the CDC.
During the height of the pandemic, Republicans accused the CDC of acting politically when issuing Covid guidance. Democrats had blasted Republicans’ anti-CDC rhetoric during the middle of the pandemic, with Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy saying it would “get people killed.”
“There are dozens of national Republicans making these same wild, unfounded allegations. The political agenda at the CDC that Republicans allege is a fiction,” said Murphy.
Earlier this year, researchers reported that there has been a gradual decline in trust in American institutions, including hospitals and public health departments. The KFF poll said that public trust in government agencies had fallen over the past year and a half.
“The pandemic is a big factor in the CDC’s flagging support, but perhaps not for the reason one might expect: A national poll conducted by Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health faculty found that public trust in the agency was tied less to its control of the spread of COVID-19 and more to whether it followed ‘scientific evidence in developing policies,’” Dr. Jennifer Nuzzo, an epidemiologist and the director of the Pandemic Center at Brown University School of Public Health, wrote in a Harvard Public Health op-ed last February. “This suggests the CDC needs to continue to show the public the evidence underlying its recommendations.”
