OPINION: The Two COVID Americas

Two COVID Americas COVID-19’s starkly different impact on the young and old has been one of the virus’s defining characteristics. It tends to be mild for children and younger adults but is often severe for the elderly. More than three-quarters of all U.S. COVID deaths have occurred among people 65 and older. Given these patterns, it seems obvious that older Americans should be more fearful of COVID than younger Americans. Yet they’re not. Sign up for The Morning newsletter from the New York Times That’s one of the YahooNews

New York Times by David Leonhardt

COVID-19’s starkly different impact on the young and old has been one of the virus’s defining characteristics. It tends to be mild for children and younger adults but is often severe for the elderly. More than three-quarters of all U.S. COVID deaths have occurred among people 65 and older.

Given these patterns, it seems obvious that older Americans should be more fearful of COVID than younger Americans. Yet they’re not.

That’s one of the striking findings from a new poll that Morning Consult, a survey firm, has conducted: Old and young people express similar concern about their personal risk from COVID. By some measures, young people are actually more worried.

The most plausible explanation for this pattern is political ideology. Older Americans, as a group, currently lean to the right, while younger generations lean to the left. And no other factor influences COVID attitudes as strongly as political ideology, the poll shows.

Across most demographic groups, Americans have broadly similar attitudes toward COVID. It’s true not just of the young and old, but also of men and women, as well as the rich, middle class and poor. The partisan gap, by contrast, is huge.

Many Democrats say that they feel unsafe in their communities, are worried about getting sick from COVID and believe the virus poses a significant risk to their children, parents and friends. Republicans are less worried about each of these issues.

Who’s right? There is no one answer to that question, because different people have different attitudes toward risk. An acceptable risk to one person (driving in a snowstorm, say, or swimming in the ocean) may be unacceptable to another. Neither is necessarily wrong.

But the poll results suggest that Americans have adopted at least some irrational beliefs about COVID. In our highly polarized country, many people seem to be allowing partisanship to influence their beliefs and sometimes to overwhelm scientific evidence. ...

A majority of the boosted say they are worried about getting sick from COVID. In truth, riding in a car presents more danger to most of them than the virus does.

A majority of the unvaccinated, on the other hand, say they are not particularly worried. The starkest, saddest way to understand the irrationality of this view is to listen to the regret of unvaccinated people who are desperately sick from COVID or who have watched relatives die from it.

“There’s nothing that matters more than our freedoms right now,” a California prosecutor said at an anti-vaccine rally in December. She died of COVID this month. ...