Americans Are Worried About Another Pandemic

A majority of Americans are worried about another global pandemic, according to a survey from February 18 to 26 for Gallup's COVID-19 web panel tracking poll, which began in March 2020.

Why It Matters

The results show the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, which plunged the world into economic and health care turmoil amid the unprecedented breakout in 2020, and it left the majority of the U.S. with a major concern about another one.

This could have a huge impact on public sentiment, including how people vote, how they think health care money should be spent and what they think governments should prepare for.

What To Know

About 58 percent of U.S. adults surveyed said they are worried there will be another global pandemic in their lifetime.

Most (42 percent) of these U.S. adults were "somewhat worried" while 16 percent were "very worried," 26 percent were "not too worried" and 15 percent were "not worried at all."

Democrats at 78 percent and independents at 57 percent were at least somewhat worried about another pandemic compared to 34 percent of Republicans.

The poll found that 59 percent of the population believe the COVID-19 pandemic is over, while 41 percent do not.

A previous version of the poll, from March 2024, had the same results on this question, up from August 2023 results, in which 53 percent said the pandemic was over and 47 percent said it was not.

This poll was administered among a random sample of 5,876 adults with a margin of sampling error of +/- 2 percentage points.

What People Are Saying

Bill Gates told The Wall Street Journal in January that he believes there is a 10-15 percent chance of a natural pandemic hitting in the next four years: "It'd be nice to think we're actually more ready for that than we were last time, but so far we're not."

Yonatan Grad, professor of immunology and infectious diseases at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, in September: "Is there another pandemic coming? Yes. When? Which pathogen? How severe will it be? No one can say for sure."

Sarah Fortune, John LaPorte chair of the Department of Immunology and Infectious Diseases at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health: "To me the question is not whether there's going to be another pandemic—clearly there's risk of another—but this: What are we going to do about the constant drumbeat of infectious diseases that's already playing out both domestically and globally?"

What Happens Next

No one can say for sure whether there will be another pandemic and what it would look like. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said in November: "The public health response to the COVID-19 pandemic highlighted a number of successes in responding to public health threats, but it also exposed challenges and gaps in CDC's core capabilities that led our agency to conduct an extensive review to identify lessons learned and make changes in our organizational structure, systems, and processes. CDC has done the hard work to make improvements to our operations, processes and communications."