Hello from SurveyMonkey!
Before the holiday break, we wanted to leave you with some of our latest data on the coronavirus pandemic. We’ve been tracking the public’s concerns about the virus—its effect on the economy, on their own financial situation, and on their own health risks—since February. (Click here to see more.)
In recent months, we’ve tracked the debate around reopening, with our latest Tableau viz showing the percent of people, week by week and state by state, who think schools, bars, restaurants, doctors’ offices, and more should be open.
Currently, 51% of adults in the U.S. say they think schools should be open, 36% think restaurants should be open, and 21% think bars should be open. The demand for schools to reopen has only increased since August, while the demand for almost everything else has fallen off in recent weeks.
Click here to explore the data.
New from Outbreaks Near Me and Surveymonkey
In new polling from Outbreaks Near Me* and SurveyMonkey, more than half of adults 65 and older (52%) now say they are eager to receive a COVID-19 vaccination “right away” if it became available to them, up from 46% just last week. Another one in five seniors (19%) say they would have some hesitancy but would still get vaccinated right away.
Altogether, 72% of seniors say they would be willing to receive a vaccination right away, compared with just 51% overall.
These results come after the CDC on Sunday announced new recommendations that prioritize vaccinations for adults age 75 and older along with front-line workers, a change made just a little more than a week after the first vaccines were rolled out in the U.S.
In the survey results, seniors are easily the most enthusiastic about receiving a vaccination and the least likely to say they would not want to get inoculated at any point.
Seniors are also more likely than younger adults to say they have been following the news about the coronavirus vaccines “very closely” (66% vs. 47% overall), and that they know “a lot” about how vaccines work in general (45% vs. 36% overall). They are also more likely than everyone younger than them to say it makes no difference to them (73% vs. 66%) that the new vaccines trigger an immune response using mRNA rather than the traditional use of a weakened or dead virus.
Overall, 51% of adults in the U.S. say they would be willing to receive the vaccine right away if it were available to them, up slightly from 48% last week. That 51% includes those who say they would want it right away (34%) and those who say they would have some hesitancy but still receive it right away (17%).
A majority of health care workers (57%) say they would receive the vaccine right away, up from 52% last week. Health care workers who have been deemed essential are only slightly more likely than nonessential health care workers to say they would receive the vaccine right away (58% vs. 54%).
White-collar workers—including those working in technology (41%), consulting and research (41%), and advertising and marketing (37%)—continue to be some of the most eager to receive a coronavirus vaccination right away.
*Outbreaks Near Me (formerly known as Covid Near You) is a joint team of epidemiologists from Boston Children's Hospital and Harvard Medical School that uses crowdsourced data to help citizens and public health agencies identify current and potential hotspots for COVID-19.
Methodology: These data come from a SurveyMonkey online poll conducted December 14-20, 2020 among a national sample of 35,970 adults in the U.S. Respondents were selected from the more than 2 million people who take surveys on the SurveyMonkey platform each day. The modeled error estimate for this survey is plus or minus 1.0 percentage points. Data have been weighted for age, race, sex, education, and geography using the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey to reflect the demographic composition of the United States age 18 and over.
Last week we also unveiled a new dashboard with Tableau and Outbreaks Near Me that shows self-reported COVID-19 symptom data, along with data on political affiliation, education level, attitudes about mask-wearing, healthcare access, and more.
Click here to explore the data.
That’s it for now—happy holidays and thanks for reading! Hit reply to send us any questions or feedback.