Americans are feeling weary that the pandemic might not be as over as they once believed, and a growing number of Republicans have expressed concern that the coronavirus is indeed getting worse.
According to a new Gallup poll, 44 percent of Democrats feel the situation is getting worse, up from 6 percent this June. The sentiment also grew among Republicans from just 3 to 16 percent in the same time period.
Overall, 30 percent of those surveyed said the coronavirus situation is getting worse, and 27 percent worry about getting infected themselves.
This marks a slight increase from last quarter but is still far below the rates of coronavirus anxiety first experienced during the pandemic.
Concerns over the coronavirus are likely reemerging because of the new variant Eris, said Jessica Mudry, an associate professor in public health communication at Toronto Metropolitan University.
“I think that because there was a new variant that emerged, the ‘newness’ and the uncertainty of the new variant’s virulence and severity likely caused an uptick of concern,” Mudry told Newsweek.
“This is consonant with most ‘new’ health scares, an immediate concern/anxiety and then a leveling off once the population gets a sense of the risk to them.”
Pandemic Repeat?
While Democrats led the pack in the realm of coronavirus anxiety, 11 percent of Republicans worry about contracting the virus compared to 41 percent respectively, survey results found.
“People are exhausted from the pandemic, as we continue to realize just how much that cost us in loved ones, health, human connection, time and money,” disease expert and Arizona State University Professor Joshua LaBaer told Newsweek. “No one is ready to go back to that, so any news of a rise in cases is likely to frighten a lot of people.”
Still, the majority of Republicans and Americans in general do not fear total pandemic redo.
Gallup results show 77 percent of Republicans believe the pandemic is over, which is in sharp contrast to Democrats, who only agreed with that statement 35 percent of the time. That was a quick decline from a few months ago when 51 percent of Democrats believed the coronavirus was essentially done with.
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Altogether, 53 percent of Americans believe the coronavirus is over, which is a slight decrease from 64 percent in May.
Despite the rising rates of anxiety, LaBaer said we currently have many more tools to help us work through a new strain of coronavirus than we did back in 2020, and newly updated vaccines and boosters are a key defense mechanism.
“The virus is now with us forever, and it will continue to change its coat to sneak its way past our immune systems, so we want to make sure our immune systems can recognize its new clothing,” LaBaer said.
Masks are also still a defense for those who are experiencing symptoms to protect those around them from possibly acquiring the virus.
The survey found Democrats were also more likely to say they still wear a mask at least sometimes at 25 percent compared to just 6 percent for Republicans.
What The Coronavirus Numbers Say
COVID EG.5, otherwise known as Eris, is already making a big dent in the coronavirus cases of today.
The new strain comprised 21.5 percent of all cases in early September, according to the CDC, making it higher than any other strain tested for. That’s a steady jump from 7.5 percent of cases in July and 1 percent in May.
The new strain is said to spread faster and more efficiently than previous variants, and it could still pose a significant risk to those who are immunocompromised or unvaccinated, health officials say.
“We have come a long way since the first waves in 2020,” LaBaer told Newsweek. “There is much more general immunity in our population, and far fewer people are dying because of the infection. But, even though the current strains are not causing the same kind of mortality and morbidity of the earlier variants, COVID-19 is still a lousy illness to get.”
The CDC noted a general uptick in cases over the past few months, with a 12.5 percent increase in deaths over the past month.
And with the rise of at-home testing, it’s likely the numbers do not account for the virus’s true caseload.
Several months ago, the CDC even made the decision to stop reporting aggregate COVID-19 cases because the data was no longer fully representative of actual infections or transmission rates.
By looking at hospital rates of coronavirus alone, the trend is less clear.
There were 15,000 new hospital admissions for coronavirus for the week ending August 19, according to CDC data. This number was actually less than half of what it was last year, but many hospitals have updated their policies so that only those who are symptomatic will be tested.
Still, the level of anxiety stems from the fact that, in many ways, the coronavirus is still a mystery in its effects on humans, experts say.
“There are so many things we still don’t know about Covid and how it affects populations,” Mudry said. “Many people get long Covid. Many people seem to have never been symptomatic or never got it at all.”