COVID responses: Very Liberal vs Liberal

[brooklynite]

New York Times

The key dividing line appears to be ideology. Americans who identify as “very liberal” are much more worried about Covid than Americans who identify as “somewhat liberal” or “liberal.” Increasingly, the very liberal look like outliers on Covid: The merely liberal are sometimes closer to moderates than to the very liberal.

That is a central finding of a poll conducted last week by Morning Consult for this newsletter. The poll is a follow-up to one from January. This time, to go deeper than partisan identification, we asked respondents to choose one of seven labels: very liberal, liberal, slightly liberal, moderate, slightly conservative, conservative or very conservative.

Nearly 50 percent of very liberal Americans say that they believe Covid presents a “great risk” to their personal health. Other liberals, moderates and conservatives tend to be less worried.

More than 60 percent of very liberal Americans believe that mask mandates should continue for the foreseeable future. Most moderates and conservatives see mandates as a temporary strategy that should end this year.

[ffr]

1. Very open-minded.

[Hugin]

2. All of the mitigation strategies have been shown to be effective...

I believe we should try them sometime.

{on this poll, perhaps the difference is that those who self-identify as 'very liberal' (i don't know of any other way to determine the classification) are also those who see COVID as a global threat instead of only being concerned about how the US fares.}

[Ace Rothstein]

4. Even the places with the most stringent mitigation strategies and compliance have been hammered now.

Omicron was a game changer.

[JudyM]

3. Interesting that the closest pair re: "great risk" was liberal and very conservative

though they diverged dramatically on the rest of the risk spectrum.

The link is dead. How many people were surveyed?

[Demsrule86]

5. I think what is interesting is that many more people than I thought were in the concerned column...

and if you look at very concerned and the next one it was very encouraging to me...that the GOP anti-vax...Covid is nothing bullshit isn't working as well as they hoped. Even the very conservative was close to 50 % if you looked at the two groups and added them up.

[JudyM]

6. That's right, it is encouraging. Especially considering it is at its low point now. When BA.2 ramps

up it will be interesting to see how the numbers shift.

[Demsrule86]

7. Hey, I am very liberal ideologically but my biggest concern is to win elections...we need more

Democrats...I am a yellow dog Democrat. I am in the somewhat concerned column...yet I still wear a mask out...partly because I had Covid before vaccines and I never want to get it again ever. Also, I have not had a cold or virus in more than two years. I may wear a mask forever...and not just for Covid...all that your phone is contaminated, wash your doorknobs etc was bullshit. The bulk of viruses are transmitted through the air...coughing and breathing. I always get a flu shot but still caught flu and common colds yearly before masking.

[JudyM]

8. CDC has contributed to the believability problem by swaying too much with political winds.

IMO they need to start urging folks to mask up NOW as BA.2 is already gaining a foothold here and the evidence is quite persuasive that it’s going to start tearing through us soon.

[Demsrule86]

10. I don't see any evidence in my state that BA.2 is gaining a foothold...it has been around

for some time and has not really been an issue.

https://www.nytimes.com/article/omicron-variant-ba2.html

"As the Omicron coronavirus surge subsides, researchers are keeping an eye on a highly transmissible subvariant known as BA.2. Many epidemiologists suspect that it may reverse the decline of cases in the United States, but doubt that it will cause a large new spike.

Here’s what we know so far about BA.2.

It’s not really new.
Scientists first discovered the Omicron variant in November, and it quickly became clear that the viral lineage already existed as three genetically distinct varieties. Each branch of Omicron had its own set of unique mutations.

At the time, the most common was BA.1, which quickly spread across the world. BA.1 was almost entirely responsible for the record-shattering spike in cases this winter.

At first, BA.1 was a thousand times as common as BA.2. But in early 2022, BA.2 started to be found in a larger proportion of new infections.

[JudyM]

12. That's strange

This article seems fairly slanted, dismissive of contrary evidence and pinning hopes on the increased immunity gained from omicron and vaccines. I’ve been following this variant somewhat and it is more concerning than this lets on. From everything I’ve read, it is markedly more contagious and while prior omicron infection is protective against it, the jury still seems to be out whether waning immunity from vaccination months ago has a meaningful impact, and also whether the current treatments are as effective. (Just my opinion based on reading, we should all be getting boosters now and masking if we want to avoid it. Fauci is walking a very thin line because of the psychological impact of restarting protections just when folks are starting to rejoice. It’s beyond me why they issued those new guidelines when it was ramping up elsewhere on the globe.)

NYT also published this in its live Covid updates this afternoon: Covid Live Updates: BA.2 Version of Omicron Spreading in N.Y.C., Officials Say, Urging Boosters
With any luck the boosters will take care of it but it takes a bit for our immune system to kick in, good idea to urge them now.

Last week it was reported that it was spreading very quickly in NY, doubling daily, IIRC.
Meanwhile, China is closing down some locales and Europe is feeling the brunt of it. Hospitalization is a lagging indicator but the positivity numbers are going back up with this variant and it is quite possible, if not nearly definite, that with our relaxed masking and more socializing we are going to feel it in a big way within a month. We’ll see. I hope I’m wrong!

[cally]

9. One of worst written articles I've ever read in Nytimes!

The data is very interesting but the conclusions in article are not supported by the data. Admonishing very liberal parents about playground equipment has no relation to data presented including who is very liberal. I have rarely been this incensed at a reporter.

I hate drawing conclusions from good data that is not supported by the data.

[LetMyPeopleVote]

11. I fit in the very liberal categor

I am very concerned about COVID and will be masking for a while