Free State of V

Free State of V


The Harris Biden Ticket

August 20, 2020

Our Fixed Income CIO Sonal Desai unveils the first insights from the new Franklin Templeton–Gallup research project on the behavioral response to the COVID-19 pandemic and implications for the recovery: we find a gross misperception of COVID-19 risk, driven by partisanship and misinformation, and a willingness to pay a significant “safety premium” that could affect future inflation.

The first round of our Franklin Templeton–Gallup Economics of Recovery Study has already yielded three powerful and surprising insights:

Americans still misperceive the risks of death from COVID-19 for different age cohorts—to a shocking extent;

The misperception is greater for those who identify as Democrats, and for those who rely more on social media for information; partisanship and misinformation, to misquote Thomas Dolby, are blinding us from science; and

We find a sizable “safety premium” that could become a significant driver of inflation as the recovery gets underway.

MISPERCEPTIONS OF RISK
Six months into this pandemic, Americans still dramatically misunderstand the risk of dying from COVID-19:

On average, Americans believe that people aged 55 and older account for just over half of total COVID-19 deaths; the actual figure is 92%.

Americans believe that people aged 44 and younger account for about 30% of total deaths; the actual figure is 2.7%.

Americans overestimate the risk of death from COVID-19 for people aged 24 and younger
by a factor of 50; and they think the risk for people aged 65 and older is half of what it actually is (40% vs 80%).
These results are nothing short of stunning. Mortality data have shown from the very beginning that the COVID-19 virus age-discriminates, with deaths overwhelmingly concentrated in people who are older and suffer comorbidities. This is perhaps the only uncontroversial piece of evidence we have about this virus. Nearly all US fatalities have been among people older than 55; and yet a large number of Americans are still convinced that the risk to those younger than 55 is almost the same as to those who are older.

SHARE OF COVID-19 DEATHS BY AGE: BELIEFS VS. DATA
Estimates of the distribution of COVID-19 deaths reported by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)

Sources: US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS), as of July 22, 2020; Franklin Templeton-Gallup Economics of Recovery Study. Results from this study are based on self-administered web surveys from an opt-in sample provided by Dynata of 10,014 US adults, aged 18 or older.