Fewer than 20 percent of Americans would get a coronavirus vaccine if Trump said it was safe

 

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Not even 20% of Americans are willing to take the COVID-19 vaccine if President Donald Trump says it is safe.

A new Axios-Ipsos poll, published on Tuesday, shows that only 19% of Americans would be severely or somewhat likely to get a coronavirus vaccine if Trump pledges its safety. However, the majority of respondents (62 percent) said they would receive the vaccine if their doctor said it was safe, while 56 percent said they would do so if the cost was fully covered by health insurance.

Trump's critics have repeatedly raised concerns that the president is trying to politicize the vaccine development process in hopes of gaining approval before the November 3 elections. Although the president has said several times that he believes a vaccine may be ready by the end of October, top health officials in his administration have said that the candidate will likely be approved by the end of November or late December. Meanwhile, government regulators and drug companies that develop vaccines have come out with data assuring the public that they will be guided by science only and release a safe vaccine.

The new poll shows that confidence in the White House and the president is extremely low when it comes to providing accurate information about the ongoing pandemic. Only 9 percent of respondents said they had a "significant amount" of confidence in Trump, while only 6 percent said the same for the White House as an institution. Another 18 percent said they had a "fair amount" of confidence in Trump, bringing the total who said they trust the president to just 27 percent. Public confidence in the White House was slightly higher, at 28%.

Conversely, nearly half of respondents (47 percent) said they trusted Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden to provide them with accurate information about the coronavirus outbreak. More than half (53 percent) said they still had confidence that their state government would look out for their best interests, while 62 percent said the same to the Food and Drug Administration, which would need to approve a vaccine.

Despite weak confidence in Trump and the White House to obtain accurate information about the virus outbreak, the president's overall approval rate appears to be relatively stable. According to the FiveThirtyEight average of national polls, about 43.7% of Americans agree with Trump, while 52.5% oppose him. The president's approval rating has hovered around 40 percent since taking office in 2017.