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How worried are people about omicron? Not as worried as some are about the economy.

Mitchell Hartman Jan 28, 2022
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The latest poll from the Kaiser Family Foundation finds that job security and the economy concerns outweigh worries about getting sick. Photo by Michael Ciaglo/Getty Images

How worried are people about omicron? Not as worried as some are about the economy.

Mitchell Hartman Jan 28, 2022
Heard on:
The latest poll from the Kaiser Family Foundation finds that job security and the economy concerns outweigh worries about getting sick. Photo by Michael Ciaglo/Getty Images
HTML EMBED:
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The Kaiser Family Foundation is out with its latest poll tracking Americans’ attitudes toward vaccination, testing and the like.

It finds Americans are less worried about the personal danger of getting sick than in previous waves of the pandemic.

The pandemic is still causing considerable anxiety about the economy and jobs, said Liz Hamel at the Kaiser Family Foundation. Workers who are Hispanic and Black are more worried than workers who are white.

Also, “people with lower incomes, who tend to be in jobs that don’t have paid time off if they get sick — they were much more worried about missing work if they were infected with COVID, than people with higher incomes,” she said.

And the number of hourly workers out sick has spiked in January, said Dave Gilbertson at payroll processor UKG, which is a Marketplace underwriter — especially in education and health care.

“Folks that aren’t working in hospitals necessarily — but they’re at skilled nursing facilities, and home health care and hospice, critical care workers are getting sick in much higher numbers,” he said.

Sentiment about the pandemic continues to skew political in the latest Kaiser Family Foundation poll. A majority of Democrats say COVID-19 is the country’s biggest problem. For the largest share of Republicans, it’s “rising prices.”

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