Trump administration officials’ handling of the coronavirus pandemic has sowed distrust in voters about their ability to deliver a safe vaccine and return the country to normal, new polling finds.
Public trust in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the government agency helping to lead the vaccine and treatment development initiatives, has dropped by 16 points since April, from 83% to 67%, according to polling from the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation published Thursday. Trust in Dr. Anthony Fauci, the government’s top infectious disease expert, has declined about 10 percentage points since April. Support from Republicans has fallen 29 percentage points, down from 77%, while Democrats’ confidence in Fauci has increased from 80% to 86%.
KFF polling, which was conducted from Aug. 28 to Sept. 3, also found that about 40% of all voters believe that the CDC and the Food and Drug Administration, which will give final approval for a vaccine, are too influenced by politics to carry out their responsibilities to make sure vaccines are safe.
A majority of voters, about 62%, fear that the Trump administration will speed the vaccine approval process along to the extent that safety will be compromised. This tracks with the polling results published two weeks ago that showed that 82% of Democrats and 72% of Republicans fear the vaccine process has been too politicized. KFF also found that only 42% of people surveyed would want to get vaccinated if a vaccine was approved before the November election, a result that aligns with Suffolk University polling released last week that 44% of people would wait to get vaccinated until other people have tried it first.
Election Day is less than two months away, and both candidates have made pandemic recovery a key part of their platforms. President Trump has said a vaccine could be approved “even sooner” than Election Day, although that possibility has been downplayed by Fauci, National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins, and Dr. Moncef Slaoui, the chief adviser for the White House coronavirus vaccine development program.
