The signs are there — people are still avoiding the virus.
Many people, especially older people, are still avoiding covid. It’s a lie that people don’t care.
Mail ballots popular with 50+ and seniors.
In some states, early voting is mostly or totally through mail ballots. And as of October 25th, the report by NBC News said the percentage of ballots returned by age in those states, skews over 50 years old. Pennsylvania 77%. Other examples: Arizona 79%, Michigan 81%, Iowa 83%, Nebraska 78%, Wyoming 73%, Maine 82%, Massachusetts 71%. And this isn’t about liberals being more into mail ballots or conservatives being mistrustful of them, because in Nebraska and Montana for example, most of the mail ballots returned are Republican or other, and they still skew older, and the states with mainly in-person, like North Carolina where 95% of early voting is in-person and a near even split between parties, but an even larger percentage of younger early voters and a lower percentage of over 50, compared to states reporting all or mostly mail ballots. So it does seem older folks have a higher interest in absentee voting.
Mail ballots are a good option for multiple reasons, but also voting early, including that you don’t want to miss out on voting just because you have an emergency or illness on Election Day.
Seroprevalence studies showing people with no evidence of past infection.
A seroprevalence survey result presented at the CDC ACIP meeting in October 2024, involves samplings from people donating blood. 3% of the population are blood donors in the U.S., donors tend to be people who donate repeatedly, and the majority are white. People with certain conditions who would be more incentivized to avoid covid are the same conditions that would make people unable or ineligible to donate blood (such as being on cardiac meds), so the sampling is probably largely not higher risk people, even among the older set, and yet a portion, especially over 65, were both vaccinated and had no sign of a recent infection — likely meaning they are actively pursuing avoidance of covid to some degree.
Market studies on in-person engagement.
Business interests are very interested in who’s avoiding covid, because it means they’re not engaging in the economy to the fullest. One survey in 2022 remarked that 58% of workers planned to keep avoiding covid in some way, and that only 42% indicated planning to return to all pre-pandemic activities. Another article from April 2024 remarked that a recent study showed that more than half of people surveyed reported that they hadn’t returned to everything they were doing pre-pandemic.
It’s not true that everyone’s getting covid all the time, and it’s not true that nobody is worried about it anymore. Stigma is why often people avoid talking about it, but they still want to avoid it and many people still take steps to do so.