WASHINGTON (AP) -
Americans remain overwhelmingly in favor of stay-at-home orders and other
efforts to slow the spread of the coronavirus, a new survey finds, even as
small pockets of attention-grabbing protests demanding the lifting of such
restrictions emerge nationwide.
The survey from The
Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research also finds that a
majority of Americans say it won’t be safe to lift social distancing
guidelines anytime soon, running counter to the choice of a handful of
governors who have announced plans to ease within days the public health
efforts that have upended daily life and roiled the global economy.
More than a month
after schoolyards fell silent, restaurant tables and bar stools emptied, and
waves from a safe distance replaced hugs and handshakes, the country largely
believes restrictions on social interaction to curb the spread of the virus
are appropriate.
Only 12% of
Americans say the measures where they live go too far. About twice as many
people, 26%, believe the limits don’t go far enough. The majority of
Americans - 61% - feel the steps taken by government officials to prevent
infections of COVID-19 in their area are about right.
About 8 in 10
Americans say they support measures that include requiring Americans to stay
in their homes and limiting gatherings to 10 people or fewer - numbers that
have largely held steady over the past few weeks.
“We haven’t begun
to flatten the curve yet. We’re still ramping up in the number of cases and
the number of deaths,” said Laura McCullough, 47, a college physics
professor from Menomonie, Wisconsin. “We’re still learning about what it can
do, and if we’re still learning about what it can do, this isn’t going to be
the time to let people go out and get back to their life.”
While the poll
reveals that the feelings behind the protests that materialized in the past
week or so in battleground states such as Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and
Wisconsin are held by only a small fraction of Americans, it does find signs
that Republicans are, like President Donald Trump, becoming more bullish on
reopening aspects of public life.
Just 36% of
Republicans now say they strongly favor requiring Americans to stay home
during the outbreak, compared with 51% who said so in late March. While
majorities of Democrats and Republicans think current restrictions where
they live are about right, Republicans are roughly four times as likely as
Democrats to think restrictions in place go too far - 22% to 5%.
More Democrats than
Republicans, meanwhile, think restrictions don’t go far enough, 33% to 19%.
“They’ll be lifted,
but there are still going to be sick people running around,” said
66-year-old Lynn Sanchez, a Democrat and retired convenience store manager
from Jacksonville, Texas, where Gov. Greg Abbott has reopened state parks
and plans to announce further relaxations next week. “And we’re going to
have another pandemic.”
More than 45,000
people in the United States have died from COVID-19, while 22 million have
applied for unemployment benefits since March. It’s that economic cost that
has led some governors to follow Trump’s lead and start talking about
allowing some shuttered businesses to reopen, including in Georgia, where
many businesses - including gyms, bowling alleys and tattoo parlors - can do
so starting Friday. Restaurants there can resume dine-in service next week.
Yet the survey
finds that few Americans - 16% - think it’s very or extremely likely that
their areas will be safe enough in a few weeks for the restrictions to be
lifted. While 27% think it’s somewhat likely, a majority of Americans - 56%
- say conditions are unlikely to be safe in a few weeks to start lifting the
current restrictions.
“If we try too hard
to restart the economy prematurely, there will be waves of reinfection,”
said 70-year-old retired medical equipment salesman Goble Floyd, of Bonita
Springs, Florida. “I don’t think the economy or life will get back to normal
until there’s a vaccine. It just seems this is so seriously contagious.”
The poll finds 59%
of Republicans say it’s at least somewhat likely that their areas will be
safe enough for reopening in just a few weeks, compared with 71% of
Democrats who say it is unlikely. Still, even among Republicans, just 27%
say that’s very likely.