Poll: Americans Vastly Overestimate COVID-19 Hospitalization Rate

41 percent of Democrats believe there's a 50 percent chance of being hospitalized for CCP virus, survey finds

Health care workers prepare an ICU room at Providence St. Mary Medical Center in Apple Valley, Calif., on March 30, 2021. Mario Tama/Getty Images

A Gallup poll released this week found that Americans, by in large, overestimate COVID-19 hospitalization and death rates.

Survey results suggest that “most Americans overstate the risk of hospitalization” for both unvaccinated and vaccinated individuals. Roughly 92 percent “overstate the risk that unvaccinated people will be hospitalized,” while 62 percent overstated the risk for vaccinated individuals, Gallup wrote in a blog post.

The poll found that 41 percent of registered Democrats believe that there’s a 50 percent chance that an unvaccinated individual will go the hospital for COVID-19, while 21 percent of Republicans and 26 percent of independents believe the same.

Gallup said that under different scenarios and calculations, fewer than 1 percent of both unvaccinated and fully vaccinated COVID-19 cases result in hospital stays. The company cited data from the Department of Health and Human Services and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for its conclusion.

“Democrats are more likely to overstate hospitalization risks for unvaccinated people, which may fuel efforts, often led by Democratic Party leaders, to enforce both mask and vaccine mandates,” the pollster wrote. “At the same time, Republicans overstate risks to vaccinated people, leading to very low vaccine efficacy estimates. This may be one of the reasons that so many Republicans have been reluctant to get the COVID-19 vaccine.”

Health officials early on in the pandemic would often warn that elderly individuals and those with compromised immune systems are at the highest risk from COVID-19. A recent Food and Drug Administration slide presented on Sept. 17 during a panel discussion on whether approve Pfizer’s booster shot suggested that a healthy 30-year-old American has a 1 in 250,000 chance of dying from the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, or just 0.0004 percent.

“For both vaccinated and unvaccinated populations, very few adults reported a correct answer,” Gallup said of its recent poll. “For unvaccinated hospitalization risk, 2 percent of Democrats responded correctly, compared with 16 percent of Republicans.

“Only 8 percent of U.S. adults gave correct answers for the unvaccinated population and 38 percent for the vaccinated population.”

According to Gallup, Democrats were “more likely to estimate hospitalization risk for the vaccinated population correctly,” saying that 42 percent correctly stated that “less than one percent of vaccinated people have been hospitalized.” About 33 percent “of Republicans correctly reported that less than one percent of vaccinated people have been hospitalized.”

For the findings, Gallup pollsters surveyed more than 3,000 Americans in August. It didn’t provide the margin of error for the poll findings.