One in every five Americans recently polled say they’re more likely to wear a mask now that President Donald Trump has tested positive for Covid-19.
About 21% of respondents in a new poll by Axios-Ipsos said they are now more likely to wear a face covering and maintain a physical distance of at least six feet from others.
For the rest, however, the news hasn’t changed their behaviors and views.
These latest poll findings come from a survey of 405 adults in the United States, conducted between Friday and Monday in the wake of President Trump’s diagnosis.
Survey responses show that 77% of adults said there has been “no change” in their likelihood to wear a mask or physically distance following news about the President testing positive, and 2% said they are less likely. The survey also found that 12% of respondents said they are more likely to wear gloves now, compared with 85% who said there has been “no change” in their likelihood to wear gloves, and 3% said they are less likely.
In a separate CNN Poll conducted by SSRS in the days following the announcement that the President had contracted the virus, two-thirds of Americans said President Trump handled the risk of coronavirus infection to others around him irresponsibly.
The poll found that 69% of Americans said they trusted little of what they heard from the White House about the President’s health, with only 12% saying they trusted almost all of it.
Disapproval of the President’s handling of the coronavirus outbreak stands at a new high in the survey, with 60% saying they disapprove. Additionally, 63% say his own infection is unlikely to change anything about the way that he handles the pandemic.
Trump returns to the White House
President Donald Trump staged a reckless departure from Walter Reed National Military Medical Center on Monday, telling his followers the virus that dangerously deprived him of oxygen and hospitalized him for 72 hours was nothing to fear before posing for a mask-less photo-op on the White House balcony.
It was a remarkable attempt to convert his still-ongoing disease into a show of strength, even as it underscored his longstanding practice of denying the pandemic’s severity and downplaying its risks despite the more than 200,000 Americans dead.
“Don’t be afraid of Covid. Don’t let it dominate your life,” Trump wrote several hours before walking carefully out of the hospital’s gold front doors, even as his doctors warned he wasn’t yet “out of the woods.”
Additional reporting by CNN’s Jennifer Agiesta, Kevin Liptak and Maeve Reston