Late Friday, the CDC updated its guidance regarding mask types for Americans, saying that people now “can choose” to wear higher quality respirators such as N95 or KN95 masks, if they wish. The updated guidance comes on the heels of President Biden’s announcement on Thursday that the nation has more than tripled its stockpile of N95s to help ensure the masks are available to the general population. In this report, we examine Americans’ current attitudes towards mask use including whether and what type of masks Americans currently use, beliefs regarding CDC mask recommendations (attitudescollected before the CDC’s updated guidance issued January 14, 2022), beliefs about which types of masks offer the greatest protection, and how mask use has changed over thecourse of the pandemic. These data shed light on the current masking behavior of Americans and point to current popular understanding (or misunderstanding) of CDC recommendations.

Recent years have seen armed protests, threats, and violence against government officials following mask mandates, COVID-19 related closures, and the 2020 election (including, most notably, the deadly January 6, 2021 attack on the US capitol). These events have sparked concern about the state of American democracy and the safety of government officials. In this report, we examine Americans’ attitudes toward the acceptability of violent protest against the government.

Misinformation remains an important public health concern, especially as it is widely seen as a factor affecting people’s behavior during the COVID-19 pandemic. In past reports, we have discussed the prevalence and demographics of COVID-19 misinformation, its link to vaccination rates, and its dependence on social media news consumption.Here, we examine the over-time shifts in COVID-19 vaccine misperceptions across different social groups. We explore whether those who believe misinformation are aware that their views contradict the prevailing opinion of scientists and medical experts. We highlight the connection between COVID-19 misinformation and trust in the government, media, science and medicine. Finally, we update our findings linking misperceptions with attitudes towards the COVID-19 vaccine.

The Covid States Project has been tracking trends in executive approval of management of the COVID-19 outbreak throughout the pandemic. We find:● Generally, there has been a downward trend for approval of all governors since the beginning of the pandemic.● Republican respondents in particular have trended downwards in their approval of governors. Republican approval of Democratic governors has dropped from a high of 57% in April 2020, to 19% in April, 2022. Approval of Republicans for Republican governors has fallen almost as quickly, from a high of 77% in April 2020, to 44% currently.● In the early stages of the pandemic, President Trump had notably low approval for his handling of the pandemic, far below the average approval levels of governors. President Biden has generally had approval levels above those of President Trump, peaking in the spring of 2021, and declining steadily since. This decline has been somewhat faster than the decline in approval of governors, reaching a nadir in April 2022 one point below that of the average governor at 38%.

In this report, we examine how many older Americans are unvaccinated against COVID-19, and who these unvaccinated individuals are. The risk of hospitalization and death from COVID-19 is far higher for older adults, making vaccination particularly critical in reducing the impact of the pandemic.KEY FINDINGS● 13% of older Americans are completely unvaccinated against COVID-19, while an additional 14% are fully vaccinated but have not received a booster, and 3% report having received a single shot of Moderna or Pfizer.● The CDC data on vaccination rates are clearly significantly flawed, because they indicate that there are more older Americans who have received at least one dose of vaccine than there are older Americans. This is because they attribute the boosters (and perhaps second shots) that many people have received to being first shots, likely due to poor vaccination record linkage for those individuals. As a result, CDC data likely understate how many people are completely unvaccinated and how many people have received boosters, and overstate the number of individuals who have received only a single dose.● The unvaccinated and unboosted are disproportionately less educated, lower-income, rural, and Republican.● The main reasons cited by older Americans for being unvaccinated were worries about side effects and a lack of trust in the process by which the vaccines were developed, similar to concerns we found in an earlier report on the reasons reported by the unvaccinated for their vaccination decision.● In the open-ended responses, many of the vaccinated but unboosted indicated an openness to getting a booster but cited obstacles or a lack of urgency to do so.

For the past two years, the United States has endured what the World Health Organization has termed an infodemic of misinformation involving COVID-19 in general, and the COVID-19 vaccination in particular. We reviewed the current breadth and depth of the COVID misinformation problem in a recent report [#82]. In that report (based on our January 2022 survey), we found that about one in six respondents (16%) believed at least one out of four false claims about COVID-19 vaccines, while a little over 1/3 (37%) were unsure about at least one false claim. As we discuss below, those percentages have remained stable in our latest survey.Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has once again thrust the misinformation problem to the center of public policy discourse. News reports feature alleged Russian false flag operations aimed at providing rationales for the invasion of Ukraine. Media also report on numerous false stories designed to shift blame for the conflict to the United States and its allies while preventing Russian citizens from learning the truth about the war and its consequences.In this report, we review the extent of Americans’ acceptance of false claims about COVID-19 and the conflict in Ukraine. We investigate the demographic and partisan correlates of believing false claims about Ukraine and the COVID-19 vaccine, as well as the confluence of these two overlapping misinformation crises. In particular, we explore whether and to what extent acceptance of COVID-19 misinformation is associated with accepting misinformation relating to the current conflict in Ukraine. Are people who are inclined to believe false claims about COVID-19 more likely to also believe false claims about the conflict in Ukraine?

Since the Supreme Court overturned the constitutional right to an abortion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization roughly two weeks ago, multiple states have enacted laws prohibiting or significantly restricting women from obtaining an abortion. The Court’s decision in Dobbs stated it was returning the “authority to regulate abortion…to the people and their elected representatives.”1 Since the preliminary decision was leaked in May 2022, numerous polls have demonstrated that nationally, a majority of Americans oppose overturning Roe v. Wade, and generally say abortion should be legal in at least certain circumstances. In this report, we go beyond national opinion and examine Americans attitudes towards abortion under various scenarios across all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia. We also examine the extent to which state policy on abortion reflects the views of their citizens to determine whether the Court's decision returning abortion policymaking to the states improved or worsened representation.To evaluate abortion attitudes, we asked respondents to rate whether they support, oppose, neither support nor oppose, or have no opinion on abortion in nine scenarios:● Staying pregnant could cause the woman to die● Staying pregnant could harm the woman’s health but is very unlikely to cause her to die● The pregnancy is caused by the woman being raped● Once a fetal heartbeat is detected● After 6 weeks of pregnancy● After the fetus can survive outside the womb● The fetus is likely to be born with serious health problems or birth defects● Having the child would be extremely difficult for the woman financially● A woman does not want to be pregnant

How significant a problem is misinformation for the delivery of healthcare services? Misinformation, and any resulting misperceptions, certainly have the potential to negatively impact people’s attitudes and behaviors surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic. Whether or not someone internalizes misinformation depends on multiple factors, but one key consideration is their level of trust in established experts providing cues on COVID-19 behavior. For instance, people who do not trust sources such as the CDC will be less likely to follow its recommendations on COVID-19 prevention behaviors, and may instead opt to seek out information - which often turns out to be misinformation - on their own. Understanding the sources and effects of information and misinformation is therefore important.

The path to FDA authorization for vaccines in young children has been complex. On February 1, 2022 Pfizer and BioNTech responded to requests from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to seek emergency authorization of their COVID-19 vaccine for children ages 6 months through 4 years on a rolling basis. This authorization would have allowed children to begin receiving the first doses of the COVID-19 vaccine while data comparing two or three course vaccine regimens for children were still being collected. However, on February 11, 2022 the FDA reversed course and announced itwould wait for data on the effectiveness of the third dose before granting emergency authorization. Most recently, Moderna announced it was seeking authorization for its vaccine for children under 6 and the FDA has laid out a timeline for examining the authorization requests and data in June.This back and forth has only added to the already confusing information environment for parents surrounding the entire COVID-19 pandemic and decisions about vaccination. Some parents of children under 5 reported frustration to The New York Times at the inconclusive and confusing nature of the vaccine approval process, along with the overall feeling of being left behind while the rest of the world opens up. Others were relieved that they could wait on the decision to vaccinate until more complete data were available.In light of this confusion, it is important to understand where parents are getting information about vaccinating their children against COVID-19. In this report we examine where parents are seeking information about their children’s health and vaccination decision-making, as well as who they discuss these important decisions with. We gathered this information by asking parents to select which sources they use from a list, as well as from an open-ended response question. We find that there is quite a bit of overlap in sources between these two methods.

KEY TAKEAWAYS● Overall support for abortion across all nine scenarios increased following the Dobbs decision, with increases ranging from 1 to 5 percentage points. Among respondents for whom the abortion issue is “extremely important”, the corresponding increases were larger, ranging from 2 to 8 percentage points.● Support for abortion increases or remains the same between the pre- and post-Dobbs periods for all nine scenarios, regardless of intent to vote, but increases modestly more consistently among respondents who are not “very likely” to vote.● Across most demographic subgroups, we see little change in the overall probability of voting following the Dobbs decision. There are three exceptions – men, rural residents, and respondents with a high school education or less - each of whom are statistically significantly less likely to say that they are “very likely” to vote in the 2022 midterm election following the Dobbs announcement.● Overall, we find that individuals who consider abortion to be an “extremely important” issue are substantially more likely to support Democrats retaining control of both houses of Congress. These gaps, in turn, increase modestly following the Dobbs announcement. For the House of Representatives, the gaps prior to and following the Dobbs announcement are 11 and 14 points in favor of Democrats, respectively. For the Senate election, the corresponding gaps are 12 and 13 points in favor of Democrats, pre- and post-Dobbs, respectively.● In the 13 states with so-called “trigger laws” that automatically imposed restrictions or prohibitions on abortion following the overturning of Roe v. Wade, public opinion moved in the opposing direction as public policy – that is, toward greater support for abortion across the nine scenarios – by 3 to 9 percentage points. Such increases were even larger among respondents in those states who indicated that abortion was “extremely important”, with maximum increases in support of 12 to 14 percentage points.

Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker’s announcement last week that he would not seek re-election comes on the heels of a wave of retirements of moderate Republican politicians who have found themselves at odds with former President Donald Trump and his vision of the Republican Party. Governor Baker’s decision to not seek re-election is somewhat surprising, given the Republican has consistently garnered some of the highest gubernatorial approval ratings according to numerous polls (including our own). However Baker has struggled to garner support from members of his own party, with numerous polls finding higher approval among Democrats and Independents than among Republicans. Baker’s struggles with his own party were on full display when President Trump endorsed Baker’s primary challenger, Geoff Diehl, in October. Baker faced grim primary prospects according to a Public Policy Polling1 poll that found Baker trailing Diehl in a hypothetical matchup between the two candidates. Baker has already served two terms as leader of the Bay state, and a third consecutive term would have been unprecedented for a Massachusetts governor.The Covid States Project regularly asks people in all 50 states about their approval of their governor’s handling of the pandemic and, in our most recent survey, about approval of their governor’s overall job performance. In this report, we focus on the approval of Governor Charlie Baker’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic since April 2020, and Baker’s most recent general approval rating.

COVID-19 continues to surge in the United States and elsewhere, propelled by the highly contagious Delta variant. As of this writing (on September 29, 2021), about three quarters (76%) of the eligible U.S. population (age 12 and up) have received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine. This is likely not enough to achieve herd immunity in the United States. Though the specific number remains uncertain, a recent estimate by the Infectious Diseases Society of America suggests that over 80% of the entire population must be fully vaccinated to reach herd immunity.More worrisome, around 1 in 5 Americans, depending on the poll, continue to say they are either uncertain or will not get the vaccine. In our most recent survey wave (fielded from August 26 to September 27, 2021), 10% of respondents who indicated that they are not yet vaccinated claimed they are extremely unlikely to get it. Another 12% are “somewhat” unlikely to seek the vaccine.In recent weeks, the Biden administration has shifted tactics in its efforts to get as many Americans as possible vaccinated. The Administration had from the outset emphasized the benefits of getting vaccinated as its primary strategy for persuading reluctant Americans to do so. Yet, starting in September the prevailing strategy seemingly shifted from emphasizing carrots to sticks. On September 9th, President Biden issued an executive order requiring all federal employees and government contractors to be vaccinated, and also announced that the U.S. Department of Labor would require that all companies with more than 100 employees require vaccination or weekly testing, as well as provide paid time off for employees to get vaccinated. The Biden Administration has also encouraged states and smaller companies to impose similar vaccine mandates.The question arises as to whether the persistence of the Delta variant has increased public support for making COVID-19 vaccines mandatory. In our April/May survey wave, six in ten respondents approved of the government mandating vaccines for everyone (see Report #52). This figure increased modestly, to 64% in our June/July survey (see Report #58).In this report, we update our assessment of public support for vaccine mandates, both nationally and across the 50 states, based on our September survey wave.

With the return of students to U.S. colleges and universities this September, more than 1,000 institutions of higher education have implemented COVID-19 vaccine mandates to keep COVID-19 cases low. The majority of students have complied with these mandates, and according to our recent survey data, nearly three-fourths of university students report having received at least one COVID-19 vaccine (Figure 1). Also according to our data, university students in the U.S. are getting vaccinated at around the same rate as the full survey sample. University students therefore may have slightly higher vaccination rates than others in their age group; according to our survey data, 67% of Americans aged 18-24 have received at least one vaccine.However, the contentiousness of COVID-19 vaccine mandates on university campuses echoes the broader societal divide on this issue. Many campuses have struggled with COVID-19 vaccine policy implementation and exemption requests, with some students even withdrawing in protest of the vaccine mandates.Given this trend, we take a closer look at university mandates on college campuses, including whether students can accurately say whether their institutions have COVID-19 vaccine policies.1 We also examine college students’ attitudes toward mandates on campus and in general, as well as student approval of their university administration’s handling of COVID-19 vaccination.

The COVID-19 pandemic and the backlash against Critical Race Theory have led to increased attention to school board elections. To better understand who votes in these elections and who attends school board meetings, this report examines the demographic characteristics of individuals who say they attended a school board meeting in the past 6 months and those who say they voted for school board at some point in the past year.Turnout in school board elections has historically been very low. Although comprehensive sources of turnout in school board elections are lacking, prior research has estimated turnout in select races to be between 3% and 12%, with even highly salient special elections unable to top 30% turnout. Between high rates of uncontested seats and a lack of salience for these hyper-local positions, school board elections have rarely garnered much attention in the history of American politics. This has changed in recent years, with controversial issues of virtual schooling, mask and vaccine mandates, rules for transgender students, and concerns about how history is taught propelling school board elections to the forefront of numerous news cycles in recent months. The increased attention and salience in school board elections are demonstrated by the spike in the number of school board members facing recall efforts in the 2021 election cycle: According to Ballotpedia, there were 90 recall efforts in 2021, the highest number observed in the 12 years they analyzed. Local news have reported spikes in school board turnout in the 2021 election cycle, with Southlake Texas, Centerville Ohio, Virginia’s Shenandoah valley, and numerous other locales, reporting higher than usual participation.In the run up to the November 2021 elections, rancorous school board meetings garnered national attention and

In early October 2021, Pfizer and BioNTech asked the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to authorize their COVID-19 vaccine for children between the ages of 5 and 11. The success of vaccinating children is, however, still contingent upon whether parents feel their children should get the COVID-19 vaccine.Before the pandemic, vaccine hesitancy among parents was prevalent in certain pockets of the US. Parental vaccine hesitancy led to decreased inoculation rates among children for immunizations such as the MMR vaccine. This subsequently led to outbreaks of previously-eradicated diseases - like the measles - among children in states such as Washington and New York in 2018, and Minnesota in 2017.With the COVID-19 vaccine, parental vaccine hesitancy could similarly lead to higher levels of COVID-19 cases among minors, while also transmitting the disease to other populations. Investigating parental vaccine concerns is important in understanding and addressing parental vaccine hesitancy surrounding COVID-19. For this reason, in June 2021 we asked parents across the country about various concerns regarding childhood COVID-19 vaccination. We isolated their top five concerns: how new the vaccine is, whether the vaccine has been tested enough, whether the vaccine actually works, immediate side effects of the vaccine, and long-term side effects of the vaccine. We asked parents about these concerns again in September 2021 to detect shifts over time.Across the board, we find that the proportion of parents who felt these five items were major concerns increased substantially. We also find that several groups tend to express more concern over vaccinating their children against COVID-19, including younger mothers, parents of younger children, parents of children who have not yet been vaccinated, Republicans and Independents, Hispanic and Black parents, the non-college educated, and rural residents.We also asked parents about the likelihood of vaccinating their kids against COVID-19. We found significant proportions of parental vaccine hesitancy. For instance, 34% of parents with kids under 12 said it was unlikely that they would vaccinate their children against COVID-19. Further, the likelihood of parents vaccinating their children against COVID-19 was highly related to parental vaccination status and mode of student instruction.Parents having concerns about vaccinating their children does not automatically result in vaccine hesitancy, and it is also possible that the vaccine hesitant adopt heightened concerns because they are vaccine hesitant. That said, the concerns and motivations driving COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy among parents should be examined more closely.

The COVID States Project survey regularly asks people in all 50 states about their approval of their governors and the President. Since our last report on executive approval, which examined trends through March 2021, the pandemic has notably evolved, with huge surges of cases and deaths associated with the Delta variant throughout the summer and early fall. Most states reacted to the dip in coronavirus infections and increase in vaccinations in late spring and early summer by lifting indoor mask mandates, only to struggle to adapt as cases surged again in the late summer and early fall 2021. Some of these states were responding to CDC guidance, which announced in May that fully vaccinated people no longer needed to wear masks indoors or outdoors, only to reverse that guidance a few months later and recommend masks indoors for Americans living in areas of high transmission regardless of vaccination status. Other states rebuffed the guidance of public health agencies by, for instance, banning mask mandates in schools, businesses, and other public places. These policy decisions received wide criticism1 particularly as COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations, and deaths surged in those states with the loosest pandemic restrictions.September 2021 has also seen important political developments with respect to national policy around COVID-19. On September 9, President Biden issued an executive order requiring all federal employees and government contractors to be vaccinated. The President also announced that the U.S. Department of Labor would require all businesses with more than 100 employees to require vaccination or weekly testing and provide paid time off for employees to get vaccinated. On September 22, the FDA authorized booster shots for those vaccinated with the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine for certain populations, including the elderly and those at higher risk of catching the disease due to their professions.In this report, we examine the approval of governors and the President for their handling of the pandemic -- and for the president's overall approval -- over time across the U.S. to assess how the public reacted to the policy decisions and developments surrounding the pandemic as well as state and federal governmental responses.

In the U.S., children ages 5 and older are now eligible for COVID-19 vaccination, after the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine received emergency authorization from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in early November 2021. The vaccine had previously been authorized for youth ages 12-17 in Spring 2021. As of December 16, the CDC reported that more than 7 million vaccine doses had been administered to children ages 5-11, and adverse events of concern –those that were resolved with a mild clinical course– had only been identified in less than a dozen kids.How are parents feeling about childhood COVID-19 vaccination in the face of new authorizations and relatively few adverse events of concern? Previously, we examined parents’ concerns about vaccinating kids against COVID-19 in June 2021 and September 2021. In these earlier reports, we discovered that parents’ top five concerns regarding childhood COVID-19 vaccination were: how new the vaccine is, whether the vaccine has been tested enough, whether the vaccine actually works, the short term side effects of the vaccine, and long term side effects of the vaccine. We found that these five parental concerns increased from June to September across several demographic groups. Further, in a separate report we also found that COVID-19 vaccination rates for minors have plateaued from September to November 2021.Now, using survey data from November 2021, we provide an update on the prevalence of these five parental concerns regarding child COVID-19 vaccination, building on the descriptive report about parental intentions from November 2021 survey data. We also examine tendencies and shifts over time for subpopulations of parents, such as by political partisanship, race/ethnicity, gender and age, population density, education level, and likelihood of vaccinating their kids against COVID-19.

In mid-August 2021, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (C.D.C.) issued a recommendation for both vaccinated and unvaccinated Americans to begin wearing masks in public again, particularly in places experiencing outbreaks of COVID-19, driven by the Delta variant. Further compounding this concern is the lower propensity of unvaccinated individuals to wear masks. For example, a report from July 2021 found that unvaccinated Americans, on average, tended to wear masks less than vaccinated Americans by a margin of 25 percentage points.Given the link between mask-wearing and vaccination, discussions of behaviors relating to COVID-19 often lump people into two categories: those who behave in ways that prevent the spread of COVID-19 and those who do not. However, doing so misses the complexity of who engages or doesn’t engage in behaviors that stem the spread of COVID-19, or why they do so. Vaccination and mask-wearing are two different means to the same end: preventing infection. They are, in part, driven by the same factor, concern over infection. But they are also partial substitutes, aimed at the same target, preventing infection. In our data, we find that 30% of the population is either vaccinated and unmasked; or unvaccinated and masked. Indeed, most unvaccinated individuals report wearing masks. Understanding this complexity is significant in getting people vaccinated, and in getting people to wear masks - particularly those who are unvaccinated. In this report, we divide Americans into four categories and investigate the tendencies of each group: (1) those who report wearing masks and who are unvaccinated (“the masked unvaccinated”), (2) those who report wearing masks and who are vaccinated (“the masked vaccinated”), (3) those who report not wearing masks and who are unvaccinated (“the unmasked unvaccinated”), and (4) those who report not wearing masks and who are vaccinated (“the unmasked vaccinated”).

Recognizing that the protection conferred by COVID-19 vaccines may wane over time, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has encouraged adults in the United States to receive booster shots that can augment their immunity to the virus. While the Biden administration sought to encourage all adults to receive boosters, the CDC initially authorized the shots only for higher-risk individuals. Subsequently, authorization was broadened to all adults, although only higher-risk individuals were encouraged to pursue boosters. Most recently, after substantial criticism, the CDC changed its language to encourage all adults to receive boosters.But regardless of the language, are US adults sufficiently convinced to seek booster shots? Will the same factors that contributed to COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy and vaccine resistance impact booster shots? The answers may have profound public health implications as the US enters the season during which respiratory viruses typically have the greatest impact, and the highly-transmissible Omicron variant rapidly becomes the dominant form of COVID-19, after being labeled a variant of concern by the World Health Organization on November 26th.Between November 3rd and December 3rd, 2021, the COVID States Project asked 22,277 adults in all 50 US states and the District of Columbia about their attitudes and behaviors regarding COVID-19. In particular, we asked about whether people are vaccinated or intend to be vaccinated, and whether they had sought booster shots or intend to seek a booster shot. In this brief report, we examine attitudes toward COVID-19 booster shots, and whether they differ across particular groups of people. Since the survey was ongoing when news about Omicron emerged in the US, we also take an initial look at whether these attitudes have begun to shift along with perceptions of the threat posed by COVID-19 subsequent to the November 26th announcement.

In early November 2021, children ages 5-11 were authorized by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to receive the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine, making an additional 28 million children eligible for the shot. Given this significant advancement in COVID-19 vaccine availability - particularly in light of recent concerns over the Omicron variant - in this report we examine parent-reported COVID-19 vaccination intentions and uptake for children.Below, we examine reported childhood vaccination rates by childhood age and across different parent demographic subgroups. Additionally, we report parents’ expressed likelihood of vaccinating their children against COVID-19 across five survey waves from February, April, June, September, and November 2021.