A new report has found that after the COVID-19 pandemic, a majority of Americans no longer trust the word of health officials but instead think doing your own research is more important.
The findings come from the latest Rasmussen Report, which found that 35% of American adults think it’s safe to trust the advice of experts, while 58% say it’s important to do your own research when it comes to health concerns.
The survey also looked at how Americans viewed the COVID-19 pandemic and the way experts handled it. The pollsters reported that 65% of Republicans and 16% of Democrats think most experts got COVID-19 wrong. Additionally, 44% of those who didn’t identify with either party reported feeling the same.
When it comes to other health-related issues, the survey found that 13% of Americans have a lot of trust in experts they hear on TV and other media, while 28% only have some. On the other hand, 34% have little trust in advice they hear from media experts, and 19% have no trust at all.
When breaking it down by political affiliations, 63% of Democrats said they have at least some trust in experts in the media, along with 28% of Republicans and 34% of independents.
The Rasmussen survey isn’t the first to find a growing trend of distrust in people deemed to be experts.
A survey from the Pew Research Center found that confidence ratings for public health officials fell in a range from 43% to 54%, much lower than during the early stages of the pandemic.
Among the officials that Americans are less trusting of include the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the president.
The Rasmussen survey included responses from 1,110 American Adults and was conducted from Jan. 23-25. There is a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.