Majority of Americans Say Government Has Done Poor Job at Averting COVID-19

A new poll shows that a majority of Americans now believe the federal government has done a poor job with regards to halting the prevention of COVID-19 spread.

The CNN poll, conducted by SSRS, found that 55 percent of Americans would agree that the government hasn’t made a good effort at spread prevention, marking an eight point jump from a similar poll one week earlier. Furthermore, 52 percent say Trump, specifically, doesn’t get their approval in terms of how he’s handled the virus so far. Somehow, 45 percent of people said they approve of how he’s handled the pandemic.

Other highlights from the newly released poll include:

• 22 percent of Americans say they know someone who has been diagnosed
• 80 percent believe the worst is yet to come
• 55 percent feel Trump could be doing more
• 37 percent say they’ve “grown more concerned” about COVID-19 in recent days

Earlier this week, Axios reported on memos they had obtained showing that Trump’s economic adviser Peter Navarro had warned the White House in January that the novel coronavirus had the potential to leave more than half a million Americans dead and cost the country nearly $6 trillion.

Some areas in the country, annoyingly, have struggled to get citizens to take social distancing guidelines seriously. 

“If you ease up prematurely the epidemic can rebound right back to the level we are at now in a matter of weeks,” Chris Murray, lead researcher at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, recently told NPR. “So the potential for rebound is enormous if we let up on social distancing.”