Majority of Americans think the federal government is making coronavirus pandemic worse

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Insight from Fox News medical contributor Dr. Janette Nesheiwat, medical director at City MD.

A majority of Americans, 60%, think that the federal government is making the country’s recovery from the coronavirus pandemic worse, while just 39% think it’s making it better, according to a new Axios-Ipsos poll.

Many Americans have changed what they expect from government during the pandemic. A Fox News poll last month found that 57% of Americans now would tell their government to “lend me a hand,” while just 36% would say, “leave me alone.”

That’s a reversal from last year, when just 34% would tell the government “lend me a hand” and 55% opted for “leave me alone.”

Despite the fact that more Americans want the government to offer assistance, trust in the federal government has plummeted since the pandemic began. In March, more than half of Americans, 53%, said they trusted the federal government to look out for their best interests. Less than a third, 30%, now trust the federal government, according to the Axios-Ipsos poll.

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The government’s handling of the pandemic will be at the top of voters’ minds during the presidential election, which is just a little more than two months away. According to the Axios-Ipsos poll, 45% of Americans trust Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden to provide them with accurate information about the coronavirus, while 31% trust Trump to give accurate information.

American opinion about the federal government’s response is split along ideological lines, as 25% of Republicans think the federal government has made coronavirus worse, but 68% of Democrats think the federal government has made things worse.

President Trump has routinely touted his administration’s response to the pandemic and slammed the plans that Biden has put forward.

“The Biden plan would eliminate America’s borders in the middle of a global pandemic, and he is even talking about taking the wall down,” Trump said on the final night of the Republican National Convention last week.

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Meanwhile, Biden has framed Trump’s coronavirus response as a “failure” and said in his acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention that America’s response to pandemic has been “by far the worst performance of any nation on earth.”

America currently has 6,071,971 confirmed cases of coronavirus, according to Johns Hopkins University data, which is 2 million more than any other country.