Know your epidemic, know your response: Early perceptions of COVID-19 and self-reported social distancing in the United States.

ABSTRACT: As COVID-19 is rapidly unfolding in the United States, it is important to understand how individuals perceive the health and economic risks of the pandemic. In the absence of a readily available medical treatment, any strategy to contain the virus in the US will depend on the behavioral response of US residents. In this paper, we study individual's perceptions on COVID-19 and social distancing during the week of March 10-16, 2020, a week when COVID-19 was officially declared to be a pandemic by WHO and when new infections in the US were more than doubling every three days. Using a nationally representative sample of 5,414 respondents 18+ years of age from the Understanding America Study (UAS), we find that perceptions about COVID-19 health risks and economic consequences in the US populati

SUBMITTER: Ciancio A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7473541 | biostudies-literature | 2020

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature