Nearly half of Americans believe COVID-19 was created in a lab, according to a new survey

pharmafile | April 28, 2020 | News story | Manufacturing and Production COVID-19, coronavirus, survey 

Almost half of Americans believe that the coronavirus was created in a lab, according to an April survey of 6,300 people.

This survey was carried out by Democracy Fund and UCLA Nationscape Project in collaboration with USA Today. It was conducted between 2 April and 8 April.

The polls found that 44% of people surveyed believe that COVID-19 was probably created in a lab. When broken down by political affiliation, 50% of Republicans believed this while 37% of Democrats participants also agreed.

Despite most evidence pointing to the virus occurring naturally, earlier in April, President Trump suggested that his government where trying to determine whether COVID-19 originated in a Wuhan lab.

The same survey showed that a significant amount of Americans believe a COVID-19 vaccine has already been created but is being withheld from the American public. The poll found that 29% believed this and political affiliation did not affect one’s view towards the vaccine.

Commenting on the vaccine part of the poll in particular, Robert Griffin, Research Director for the Democracy Fund Voter Study Group said: “To see about a third of people give that some level of, ‘Yeah, that might be true,’ that was pretty shocking to me. That’s a pretty dark type of thought to be floating around the public.

“There’s an undercurrent of a lack of trust in society, a lack of trust in elites. You could sort of see how that could suggest sort of a rather nefarious bit of actions on the part of a wide variety of actors within society if people are truly holding onto that idea. There’s a variety of battlegrounds in a public health crisis like this. But another one is just how to convince people of the truth about a variety of things.”

Conor Kavanagh

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