WASHINGTON — What a difference a month makes.
Four weeks ago, in mid-January, the Covid-19 omicron variant was booming, positive rates were hitting record highs and the nation was looking at video of overcrowded hospitals. Today virus rates are plummeting and Americans are talking about having to “learn to live” with the virus.
Almost two years into the pandemic, the nation feels as though it has turned a corner on the virus, at least in terms of the attitudes around it. And there may be political ramifications to all the changes.
It’s hard to fully grasp how different the numbers are today compared to mid-January, but the data show that omicron followed the predicted pattern — a massive spike followed by a sudden drop.
On Jan. 15, the Centers for Disease Control reported the United States was averaging more than 807,000 new daily cases in a seven-day period. The seven-day average had skyrocketed from about 122,000 cases a day just one month earlier on December 15. That January 15 figure was the high-water mark for new daily cases since the very beginning of the pandemic in March of 2020.
This past week, on Feb. 15, the seven-day new case figure had crashed down to under 135,000 cases a day. That is a drop of more than 83 percent.
To be clear, the pandemic is not over. That Feb. 15 number is still higher than the seven-day average for all of October and November — and higher than the case rate for the same date in 2021. But the sharp downward trend is impossible to ignore and a drop is apparent in Covid deaths as well.
Covid deaths tend to be a lagging indicator but — people get sick before they pass away — so their peak came later but comparing Feb. 1-15 shows a marked decline.
On February 1, the CDC reported the daily average for Covid-19 deaths over a seven-day period was 2,516. By this week, February 15, the figure was down to 2,100, a decline of 16 percent in that time.
Even during the peak of omicron, when new cases were at their highest since the pandemic began, the death figure did not reach an all-time high. The seven-day average peak for Covid-19 deaths came in mid-January of 2021 at roughly 3,400.
That combination of factors, the sudden decline in cases and the lower death rate with omicron seems to have Americans feeling differently about the pandemic than they did a month ago.
Overall, only 22 percent of American adults say they believe “the coronavirus is a severe health risk” in their local community, according to a Morning Consult Poll released Feb 12. That’s a 12-point drop on that same question from January 14, when 34 percent of adults said they saw the virus as a severe risk. And those drops happened even across the great red/blue divide in American politics.
Democrats are still more likely to perceive “a severe health risk” than Republicans, but the mid-February figure, 32 percent, is 14 points lower than the mid-January figure of 46 percent. Among Republicans, the current “severe health risk” figure is 14 percent, compared to 23 percent in mid-January, a 9-point decline.
As we often note on the Data Download, finding agreement between Democrats and Republicans is rare — and Covid has produced some sharp partisan divides from — so when you see moves like that, you are likely to see action. And we have.
Over the past month, mask mandates have begun to come down — and not just in Republican territory.
This past week California removed its mask mandate for vaccinated people. The week before New York removed its mandate. Illinois plans to get rid of its mandate on February 28. And Washington DC is planning to do the same thing one day later. Oregon is planning on ending its statewide mandate, including a mandate for schools, on March 31.
Those states are not political battlegrounds. In 2020, President Joe Biden won each of them by at least 16 points. If you wanted a sign that the nation is in a different place on the pandemic, it’s hard to find better evidence than that.
Considering 2022 is a midterm year, it’s hard not to look for political meaning in the shift over the last month.
It’s tempting to say that the nation’s change in attitude on the virus shows voters may be ready to move on to other issues as they “learn to live with Covid.” But if nothing else, the last two years have shown the Covid storyline is always subject to change. After all, before omicron, there was delta and last spring there were the vaccines and real hope for a return to normal.
That history suggests that the real lesson from all the dramatic swings in the last month may be that 2022 is shaping up to be the year where the issue terrain is perpetually unsettled with — and electoral predictions may be extremely difficult.
