A new survey found that 95% of respondents in the Los Angeles region support the sweeping new health orders meant to slow down the spread of the coronavirus.
Not only that, more than 30% of them said they think local governments should put even stricter rules into place, according to a poll conducted by the Dorothy Leavey Center for the Study of Los Angeles at Loyola Marymount University.
“Across the board, these results show that LA is fully engulfed in this situation,” Fernando Guerra, the center’s director, said in a statement. “While more than half of Los Angeles households have lost income, they still support tougher measures against the COVID spread. We’re willing to lock down society even more if that’s what it takes to stop the virus.”
Researchers found that 48% of Angelenos bore some kind of economic pain from the pandemic through layoffs or lost hours. The brunt of that pain fell on younger people and those with already low incomes, researchers said.
Even under that pressure, most people said they’d support more drastic measures to control COVID-19’s spread, such as closing public transportation, extending school closures, shuttering all airports and restricting travel within California.
Only 14.5% of respondents said they thought the coronavirus was being blown out of proportion.
The survey, which was performed by phone and online from March 23 to April 8, took into account the opinions of 1,000 residents from the city of Los Angeles and 1,000 from elsewhere in Los Angeles County. It’s not clear how many of them were from Long Beach.
Researchers said locals are apparently listening to warnings about the virus and are well informed.
“Most Angelenos gave accurate answers to the ways they can protect themselves as well as the most common symptoms of the coronavirus,” they said.
The poll found that more than 85% of respondents had a “fair amount” or “great deal” of confidence in their local health departments’ responses to the pandemic. Gov. Gavin Newsom had similarly high marks with more than 84% approval. That goodwill didn’t extend to the president, with 39% of people saying they had “no confidence at all” in Donald Trump to deal with the crisis. Another 22.6% had “not very much confidence” in the president.
About 85% of respondents also said they had a high or fair amount of confidence in Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti. Long Beach and Mayor Robert Garcia didn’t specifically appear in the survey, which had a margin of error plus or minus 2%, according to Loyola Marymount University.
See the full survey here.