“It’s what you know that ain’t so.” Much misinformation was to be expected at the beginning of the pandemic, because we simply did not know. But now there is quite a bit of data available that ought to be informing our public response. Yet we have systematically wrong understanding of the problem, in large part due to incessant press coverage of the virus. And unfortunately, but not unexpected, everything with the virus is now political, especially when the virus has significantly weakened the appearance of effective leadership by President Trump. It is not surprising that Mr. Biden and Democrats accuse him of, at minimum, greatly exacerbating the impact of Covid-19.

Covid-19 is very serious. But what if it’s not nearly as serious as people think it is? Would we have a different public policy response? In a joint Franklin-Templeton/Gallup survey, Sonal Desai looks at this issue and finds some surprising results:

The first round of our Franklin Templeton–Gallup Economics of Recovery Study has already yielded three powerful and surprising insights:
1. Americans still misperceive the risks of death from COVID-19 for different age cohorts—to a shocking extent;
2. The misperception is greater for those who identify as Democrats, and for those who rely more on social media for information; partisanship and misinformation, to misquote Thomas Dolby, are blinding us from science; and
3. We find a sizable “safety premium” that could become a significant driver of inflation as the recovery gets underway.

On the scale of the errors in perception, Ms. Desai is stunned:

Six months into this pandemic, Americans still dramatically misunderstand the risk of dying from COVID-19:
1. On average, Americans believe that people aged 55 and older account for just over half of total COVID-19 deaths; the actual figure is 92%.
2. Americans believe that people aged 44 and younger account for about 30% of total deaths; the actual figure is 2.7%.
3. Americans overestimate the risk of death from COVID-19 for people aged 24 and younger by a factor of 50; and they think the risk for people aged 65 and older is half of what it actually is (40% vs 80%).

These results are nothing short of stunning. Mortality data have shown from the very beginning that the COVID-19 virus age-discriminates, with deaths overwhelmingly concentrated in people who are older and suffer comorbidities. This is perhaps the only uncontroversial piece of evidence we have about this virus. Nearly all US fatalities have been among people older than 55; and yet a large number of Americans are still convinced that the risk to those younger than 55 is almost the same as to those who are older.

As Mark Twain used to say, it ain’t what you don’t know that’s the problem, but what you know that ain’t so…

HT to Cafe Hayek from last week.