Recent research has shown that not only did knowledge gaps about coronavirus among the public occur at the beginning of the outbreak (McCormack et al., 2020) but also influenced perceptions about mortality rates (Gollust et al., 2020), incident rates (Alsan et al., 2020), and the effectiveness of masks (Nagler et al., 2020). Downplaying the virus influences mitigation efforts and affects public health efforts to educate the public on how the virus spreads. The downplaying of the virus by politicians has public health implications and politicizes the issue, making it more difficult to control the virus.Įnding the COVID‐19 pandemic in the United States will require a tremendous undertaking on the part of government across both state and federal levels. Despite the United States setting daily records for cases, hospitalizations, and deaths, President Trump and some Republican governors have continuously downplayed the virus, consistently claiming that the United States was rounding the corner or that it is no worse than the common flu (Maxouris, 2020). There has been substantial disagreement about COVID‐19 since the outbreak began in the United States among politicians and health experts. Unfortunately, a disproportionate share of the burden has been imposed on the United States with over 11 million confirmed cases and over 250,000 deaths, with some studies suggesting that the actual case counts could be somewhere between 6 and 24 times higher than reported cases. By November of 2020, over 55 million individuals have contracted the virus, with over 1.3 million deaths (COVID‐19 Dashboard, 2020). Since March of 2020, the COVID‐19 pandemic has devastated populations’ worldwide, causing considerable health, economic, and social costs.
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