AP-NORC poll: Seeking virus data, people struggle with trust
By AAMER MADHANI and HANNAH FINGERHUT
today
WASHINGTON (AP) — When John Manley tested positive for COVID-19, his sister urged him to get on the malaria drug that she’d heard Fox News hosts plugging and that President Donald Trump was heralding as a potential “game changer” for fighting the coronavirus.
But Manley, 58, a civilian U.S. Army public affairs officer, was skeptical of using a drug not approved by the Food and Drug Administration for treating the virus and decided it was a gamble not worth taking.
“It caused a huge rift in the family because the science wasn’t behind it,” said Manley, who lives in Stuttgart, Germany, and whose wife, Heidi Mathis, also tested positive for the virus after a visit to New York. Both have since recovered, and the FDA has advised people not to take the drug outside a hospital or clinical trial.
The Manley family squabble highlights an essential question that many Americans are grappling with as they seek out the information they need to stay safe during the country’s worst public health crisis in a century: Whom do you trust?
Or, as Manley frames it: “What is being jammed down our throats in our news? Who is talking about these things? Where do you go to actually get something you can believe?”
https://apnews.com/1ca088a559803242579630f88b99b681