Covid-19 Personal Impacts — Results

Over the weekend, I ran a brief survey to assess the personal impacts of Covid-19 on our community. This is our second survey about Covid-19 so far, with one in April asking about corporate and professional impacts.

There were 106 responses, with ~70% from the US, ~15% from the UK, and the rest from a mix of 12 other countries. Summary results are below.

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Here are the topline results from the 11 questions asked. Some have been combined for brevity, as you’ll see:

• Have you been tested for coronavirus? Less than 3% of respondents have received a test for SARS-CoV-2. All those who said they’d been tested hail from the US.
• Do you know anyone who has tested positive? Been hospitalized? Died? 65% of respondents know someone who has tested positive. 30% know someone who has been hospitalized because of Covid-19. 23% know someone who has died from Covid-19.
• Has your level of concern about becoming infected changed in the past month? For 54%, the level of concern has remained the same, with 18% saying their level of concern has gone up/down a little, and 5% saying their level of concern has gone up/down a lot. Basically, a bell-shaped curve here.
• Has your household suffered economically during the pandemic? Approximately 25% of respondents answered “yes” to this.
• How would you rate your level of confidence in your local political leadership’s response? Here, confidence levels were strong, with 39% saying they were very confident, 34% somewhat confident, and 8% extremely confident. Only 10% were not at all confident in their local political leadership.
• How would you rate your level of confidence in your national political leadership’s response? Here, the news is worse, with 67% saying they are not at all confident in their national political leadership, 13% saying they’re not so confident, and only 20% split among somewhat, very, and extremely confident. Most of this was driven by the US respondents. Only 15% of European respondents were not at all confident, while 86% of US respondents were not at all confident. Only one person indicated any confidence in the US national political response.
• How easy or difficult is it for you to work effectively these days? Here, respondents were split mostly between somewhat easy and somewhat difficult (28% each), with some finding it very easy (23%), some neither easy nor difficult, and only 3% very difficult.
• How are you feeling mentally and emotionally compared to a month ago? 48% of respondents indicated they are feeling about the same, with 28% feeling worse, 19% feeling better, and single-digit percentages feeling much better or much worse.

The biggest surprise to me was the low level of testing among respondents. This underscores that we have a long way to go with testing and tracing. The failures of national leaders in the US is well-known. It’s reassuring to see that most people in our professional space are finding the working arrangements tolerably productive.

Thanks to all of those who responded. I’ll repeat this again somewhere down the road, probably along with parts of the first survey, so we can all see changes over time.

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