The variant's high transmissibility has likely allowed Omicron to reach communities in more Democrat-leaning parts of the country that were previously able to protect themselves. "Before Omicron, actions that people were taking, like masks in schools, would have a really significant impact," he says. Hanage says that Omicron is much more effective at evading masks and other measures to prevent infection. That likely was mostly down to the Omicron variant, according to William Hanage, an epidemiologist at Harvard University. "There was some indication that people who trusted conservative news media sources for COVID information were more likely to believe misinformation than those who trusted more mainstream news sources," Hamel says.ĭespite these factors, the death gap between the pro-Trump and pro-Biden counties did shrink slightly over the winter from 2.73 to 2.26. Kaiser's poll found that 94% of Republicans believed one or more false statements about the vaccines. Kaiser examined several common pieces of misinformation such as the idea that the government is exaggerating the severity of the pandemic, or that the vaccines contain a microchip. Hamel says that previous polling has shown that belief in misinformation is highly correlated with being unvaccinated. "It does appear that there's a sort of hardening of attitudes among those who have decided not to get the vaccine," she says. Moreover, Hamel says that 37% of Republicans now say they will definitely not get vaccinated. Roughly 90% of Democrats say they are vaccinated compared to just 55% of Republicans. Political affiliation continues to be the largest predictor of vaccination status, says Liz Hamel, director of public opinion and survey research at the Kaiser Family Foundation, a non-partisan think tank. "It's hard for people to actually find the facts, particularly if they are of certain political persuasion," she says. Trusted conservative sources of information tend to have far higher levels of vaccine misinformation than liberal sources. Meanwhile anti-vaccine advocates have found new audiences on social media, often by feeding into conspiracy theories on the political right.
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