American Optimism Fades Amid Omicron Surge

After a couple of months of respite, when things were starting to look up and many Americans caught a glimpse of pre-pandemic life in the first half of 2021, Covid-19 returned to the front pages and the top of many people’s minds with the emergence of the Delta variant in the summer. When the Delta wave started to ebb, people once again hoped that the worst would be over, only to see the emergence of Omicron, which has brought case numbers to unprecedented highs in recent weeks.

Amid the latest resurgence of COVID cases, optimism among Americans is quickly fading, as data from polling company Gallup illustrates. When asked about the coronavirus situation in the country between January 3 and 14, just 20 percent of respondents said that things are getting a lot or a little better, down from a pandemic high of 89 percent in June 2021 and 51 percent in the wake of the Delta wave in October. At the other end of the spectrum, 58 percent of respondents think that things are getting worse, up from 18 percent in October and from a pandemic low of 3 percent before Delta's emergence in June.