5 Years Later: America Looks Back at the Impact of COVID-19, P4

February 12, 2025

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The information environment: Many say the media exaggerated the risks of COVID-19

The COVID-19 pandemic forced Americans to try to parse through information about a new topic that scientists were scrambling to fully understand – and that almost no one had heard of just a few months before. About two years into the pandemic, 60% of U.S. adults said they felt confused as a result of changes to public health officials’ recommendations, and 57% said false and misleading information about the virus and vaccines contributed a lot to problems with the response.

Challenges in public understanding persist even today, with about four-in-ten Americans – including similar shares of Democrats (36%) and Republicans (41%) – saying they are not sure what the current health guidelines are for someone who gets COVID-19.

COVID-19 also arrived in a rapidly changing news environment. Many Americans had already lost trust in the information from national news organizations – a change driven by Republicans. And news about COVID-19 fit into that trend:

Overall, 54% of Americans say the news media exaggerated the risks of COVID-19 at least slightly. This includes eight-in-ten Republicans who say the media greatly (65%) or slightly (15%) exaggerated the risks, compared with three-in-ten Democrats who express similar views. An additional two-in-ten Democrats say the media didn’t take the risks seriously enough, while half say they got the risks about right.
There are similar patterns in views toward public health officials like those at the CDC, Joe Biden and his administration, and state elected officials. In each case, Republicans are much more likely than Democrats to say these sources exaggerated the risks of COVID-19 at least slightly.
Republicans have a different perspective on what they heard from the Trump administration: More than half of Republicans (59%) say Trump got the risks about right. By contrast, 81% of Democrats say Trump didn’t take the risks of COVID-19 seriously enough.
At the same time, Republicans are much less confident than Democrats that they would be able to find accurate information in the event of a new health emergency. While about three-quarters of Democrats (74%) say they are at least somewhat confident they could do this, just under half of Republicans (46%) agree. Overall, 60% of U.S. adults express this view.