It has been five years since the first case of covid-19 was detected in America. Since then 100m cases have killed more than 1m Americans. Vaccinations and advancements in medical treatments helped save millions more. And yet Americans’ trust in vaccines and medical institutions has fallen sharply in the years since. What started as a medical emergency soon became a battleground in the country’s culture wars. And as the effects of lockdowns and other restrictions took hold, resentment and distrust grew.
The charts below help illustrate these trends. ...
Trust in institutions (such as government, public-health agencies and the media) declined during the first year of the pandemic. A study by Arnstein Aassve of Bocconi University in Milan and his colleagues found that institutional trust fell on average between the first wave of cases in April 2020 and the third one in November of that year (see chart 1). This fall was particularly steep among people who voted for Mr Trump in the 2020 election. While their trust in institutions eroded, their trust in personal relationships (or “social trust”) increased.
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