University of Chicago.
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
J Health Polit Policy Law. 2024 Jun 1;49(3):351-374. doi: 10.1215/03616878-11066336.
The United States underperformed its potential in responding to the COVID-19 pandemic. The authors use original survey data from April 2020 to March 2022 to show that political partisanship may have contributed to this inconsistent response by distinguishing elites and citizens who took the crisis seriously from those who did not. This division was not inevitable; when the crisis began, Democrats and Republicans differed little in their viewpoints and actions relative to COVID-19. However, partisans increasingly diverged when their preferred political leaders provided them with opposing cues. The authors outline developments in party politics over the last half century that contributed to partisan division on COVID-19, most centrally an anti-expertise bias among Republicans. Accordingly, Republicans' support for mitigation measures, perception of severity of COVID-19, and support for vaccines gradually decreased after the initial outbreak. Partisan differences also showed up at the state level; Trump's vote share in 2016 was negatively associated with mask use and positively associated with COVID-19 infections. Diverging elite cues provided fertile ground for the partisan pandemic, underscoring the importance of political accountability even in an era of polarization.
美国在应对新冠疫情方面表现不佳。作者利用 2020 年 4 月至 2022 年 3 月的原始调查数据表明，政治党派可能导致了这种不一致的反应，将认真对待危机的精英和公民与不认真对待的人区分开来。这种分裂并非不可避免；当危机开始时，民主党和共和党在对新冠病毒的观点和行动上差异不大。然而，当他们喜欢的政治领导人向他们提供相反的线索时，党派分歧就越来越大。作者概述了过去半个世纪的政党政治发展，这些发展导致了党派在新冠疫情上的分歧，其中最重要的是共和党人对专业知识的偏见。因此，共和党人对缓解措施的支持、对新冠病毒严重程度的看法以及对疫苗的支持在疫情初期过后逐渐下降。党派差异也在州一级显现出来；特朗普在 2016 年的选票与口罩使用呈负相关，与新冠病毒感染呈正相关。精英之间的分歧为党派之间的疫情提供了肥沃的土壤，这凸显了即使在极化时代，政治问责制也很重要。
