An Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll reveals only 37 percent of Americans name the coronavirus as one of their top five priorities in 2022. At the same time last year, 53 percent of respondents named the COVID-19 pandemic in the open-ended question.
The Left has now spent two years focusing on the Coronavirus responses – but the problem is fading in the minds of Americans after two years of ongoing exhausting restrictions, mask mandates, and lockdowns, despite Omicron being far less dangerous than previous variants.
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The change in Americans' concerns for the economy – especially inflation – is a good sign for Republicans, who pride themselves on fiscal responsibility and who have slammed the Administration for its handling of increasing consumer prices.
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The economy outpaced the pandemic in the open-ended question, with 68 percent of respondents citing it in some way as a top 2022 concern. While a similar portion said the same last year, citations of inflation are much more popular now, with 14 percent this year, compared with less than 1 percent last year.
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Consumer prices soared 6.8 percent in the last 12 months ending in November, a nearly four-decade high.
Twenty-four percent of Americans name household finances – mainly cost of living – as a top-five concern for government priority compared to the 12 percent who said the same last year.
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President Joe Biden has attempted to blame the economic issue onto companies, an opinion that has divided Democrats and White House allies.
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Despite private warnings, however, the Administration has increased its rhetoric that rising prices for things such as gasoline and meat are a result of corporate consolidation and greed in passing on higher prices to the consumer.
Many Democrats are skeptical whether monopoly power accounts for the massive increase in inflation and maintain Biden needs a new counter to Republican attack on the issue.
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Even though the new survey published Monday was administered in early December, when worries about the virus grew as Omicron took hold in the country, Americans' focus was still turned to the economy and personal finances.
In follow-up interviews with participants, including self-identified Democrats, many said developments like record caseloads and hospitalization rates didn't shake their views about where the government's priority should be with COVID.
"If we say anything along the lines of, 'Let's wait until the pandemic dies down," well, this son of a gun virus has unlimited ability to mutate," said Mary Small, a 65-year-old pharmaceutical research contractor in Downingtown, Pennsylvania, who hopes efforts to promote gun safety will take center stage in November's elections, including her state's race for an open Senate seat. "We might never be done with this."
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