ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — As COVID-19 cases have surged this fall across the United States, fewer people are social distancing than in the spring.
That’s according to researchers at Northeastern, Harvard, Rutgers and Northwestern universities, which have been surveying roughly 20,000 people across all 50 states every month since April.
Their latest report, analyzing more than 139,000 responses, concludes social distancing has “decreased dramatically” since the spring, while partisan gaps in our behavior have increased – especially for social distancing – over the past six months.
“We’re definitely concerned, specifically around social distancing," said Matthew Simonson, a co-author on the survey at Northeastern University.
“I think it’s incredibly valuable to see how people’s attitudes have changed over the course of the last eight months since the pandemic became really widespread.”
The percentage of people who say in the past 24 hours that they’ve been in a room with people they don’t live with spiked from 25 percent in April to 45 percent in October.
Similarly, more people are reporting going to the gym, places of worship or out to eat or drink. The number of people surveyed who said they’d been to a bar or restaurant within the past 24 hours more than tripled -- from 5 percent in April to 15.9 percent this fall.
However, survey responses during this same period have revealed one promising trend, researchers say. Mask-wearing has increased and remained consistent among both Republicans and Democrats.
"I worry how bad it’d be if we weren’t wearing masks," Simonson said. "But it doesn’t quite seem to be enough to balance out the fact people are hanging out indoors with other people.”
A majority of both Democrats and Republicans surveyed said they support asking people to stay home and avoid getting together, canceling major events and limiting restaurants to take-out only, but the gap in support is significant.
While 98 percent of Democrats surveyed support asking people to stay home, 72 percent of Republicans feel the same. Similarly, 89 percent of Democrats support limiting restaurants to take-out while 56 percent of Republicans surveyed support that idea.
The partisan gap appears starker when it comes to requiring businesses to close and prohibiting in-person learning for students — with 78 percent of surveyed Democrats to 40 percent of Republicans supporting the former, while 85 percent of Democrats and 48 percent of Republicans support the latter.
Dr. Jay Wolfson at the University of South Florida says the survey provides some useful insight even if it's not a perfect measurement.
“This is a self-reported study and there are always challenges to the validity of self-reporting," he said.
But there is significant value, Wolfson says, in being able to compare the spread of the virus with potential changes in behavior in regions across the country.
Findings in the survey reveal what health professionals have been saying all along, Wolfson argues, that slowing the spread of the virus is best done through a combination of mitigation efforts. They are efforts that will be necessary for some time even as vaccine deployment begins.
“It’s not just wearing a mask necessarily, it’s not just social distancing, not just washing your hands," he said. "It’s all of the above, especially when we’re in a ‘spike’ condition now.”
Simonson says he is concerned the existence of a vaccine could lead people to become even more lax, especially young healthy people. He says researchers are going to be watching for that as they continue to do these surveys.
People might ease up just because the existence of a vaccine makes them feel safer," Simonson said. "It will take months to roll out these vaccines, and many people who are elderly or immunocompromised may still have a long wait."
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