A majority of Americans now believe it is time to accept that COVID will stick around and we should move on with our lives amid declining ...
A majority of Americans now believe it is time to accept that COVID will stick around and we should move on with our lives amid declining COVID cases - as the number of people who think President Joe Biden is doing a good job handling the pandemic continues to decline.
A Monmouth University poll released on Monday found that a whopping 70 percent of Americans agree with the sentiment that 'COVID is here to stay and we just need to get on with our lives,' including 78 percent of those who report having had COVID and 65 percent of those who say they have not yet been infected.
Only about a third of the 794 randomly identified Americans surveyed between January 20 and January 24 said they felt the country will get the pandemic under control, and life will return to normal by the end of the year, while 28 percent believe a return to normalcy will never happen.
Meanwhile, just 43 percent of the respondents said Biden has done a good job in handling the pandemic, while 53 percent say he has done a bad job.
That marks the first time since the New Jersey-based university began conducting the monthly survey last year that Biden's ratings have been underwater. Just one month ago, the university reports, views on the president's handling of the virus was evenly split, and before that it was consistently positive.
But now COVID cases are continuing to decline throughout the country, and just over half of the respondents supported reinstating mask and social distancing mandates, while less than half of the public supported vaccine mandates.
'Americans' worries about COVID haven't gone away,' said Patrick Murray, the director of the Monmouth University Polling Institute. 'It seems more to be a realization that we are not going to get this virus under control in a way that we thought was possible just last year.'
A Monmouth University poll released Monday found that a whopping 70 percent of Americans believe 'It's time we accept that COVID is here to stay and we just need to get on with our lives'
January's poll also marked the first time in a year that a majority of those surveyed disapproved of President Joe Biden's handling of the pandemic. He is seen here removing a KN95 face mask before speaking during a meeting with the Qatar's Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani
Daily COVID-19 cases in the U.S. have starkly dropped off after peaking in early-January
The poll comes as COVID cases in the United States are continuing to fall, with just 510,871 cases per day reported as of Monday morning, a drop of 28 percent over the week before.
The falling case levels in the U.S. have increased calls to end the remaining pandemic-related measures in the country. States like New York, that were struck hard by the variant early on, are now seeing cases dramatically decline - down more than 50 percent over the last week alone.
Dr. Scott Gottlieb, former director of the Food and Drug Administration and current board member at Pfizer, said on CNBC's Squawk Box Monday that the stark drop in cases over the past few weeks is a sign it is time for the remaining COVID restrictions in the U.S. to be lifted.
'Society isn't going to tolerate these things in perpetuity. The mitigation we've adopted has to be used to deal with epidemic peaks, not be a constant way of life,' he said.
'We are going to have to be willing to withdraw these mitigations.'
A precedent has been set as well, with some of the countries that were struck hardest by the Omicron variant already laying out plans for post-pandemic life.
Earlier this month, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced the end of all pandemic related restrictions, including the end of mask mandates, some capacity restrictions, and work from home orders. Testing requirements for Britons to return to the nation will be dropped in the coming weeks as well. This comes after a miraculous turnaround for the nation that was struck early by the variant, and was struck so hard some officials feared the nation's hospital system would be overwhelmed.
The UK is averaging just under 90,000 COVID cases per day as of Monday morning, a far fall from the peak of over 180,000 cases earlier this month.
But the Centers for Disease Control remains hesitant to declare America as past the pandemic. It still deems 99.75 percent of U.S. counties - 3,214 out of 3,220 - as an area of 'high' transmission.
'We know there is still much to be done to stop the spread of COVID-19 and end the pandemic. We are still seeing far too many new cases, hospitalizations, and deaths,' a CDC spokesperson told CNN last week.
'As we look forward to the spring, it's important to continue practicing prevention measures that we know work - vaccinating, wearing a mask in public, indoor settings, staying home when you are sick, and washing your hands frequently.'
While cases are trending in the right direction in America, the 500,000 cases being averaged daily is still double the pre-Omicron record set in early 2021. The near 2,400 cases being averaged every day is also the most since last February, the tail-end of the nation's deadliest COVID surge.
In a recent episode of The Joe Rogan Experience, experts questioned the need for COVID vaccines - prompting some artists to take their music off of Spotify, which houses his podcast
And when comedian Joe Rogan recently featured two experts on his podcast, The Joe Rogan Experience, who questioned the need for vaccine mandates, he was met with backlash.
In the aftermath, artists Neil Young and Joni Mitchell removed their music from Spotify, which streams Rogan's podcast, to protest over its spread of what Young described as 'deadly misinformation about COVID'.
The streaming service later announced it would start adding an advisory content warning to any of Rogan's episodes concerning COVID.
But Rogan has since said he was only seeking to have conversations with people who have 'differing opinions.'
'I'm not trying to promote misinformation, I'm not trying to be controversial,' Rogan said, before pointing out that many facts about COVID which are now widely accepted would have been seen as misinformation just months ago.
Rogan argued that vaccinated people can still carry and spread COVID - something which in the earlier days of the pandemic was widely thought not to be true.
He also said that he schedules the guests on his podcast himself, and that he would try to book doctors with different opinions right after he talks to 'the controversial ones.'
'I've never tried to do anything with this podcast other than to just talk to people,' he said.
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