Increasing Public Criticism, Confusion Over COVID-19 Response in U.S.

Nearly two years after the coronavirus outbreak took hold in the United States, Americans are increasingly critical of the response to COVID-19 from elected officeholders and public health officials.

Amid debates over how to address the surge in cases driven by the omicron variant, confusion is now the most common reaction to shifts in public health guidance: 60% of U.S. adults say they’ve felt confused as a result of changes to public health officials’ recommendations on how to slow the spread of the coronavirus, up 7 percentage points since last summer.

Americans are now almost evenly divided over how well public health officials, such as those at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, are responding to the outbreak, with about half (49%) saying they are doing an only fair or poor job and half (50%) saying they are doing an excellent or good job. CONTINUED

Alec Tyson & Cary Funk, Pew Research Center


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