Political loyalties are shaping the way the public respond to the Covid-19 pandemic. A President who downplays the significance of the virus leads to a population vulnerable to Coronavirus myths and pseudoscience. 

Eating garlic, taking a bath, and drinking hot water. These are three alleged “cures” that will not protect you from the coronavirus, but they have become so widely believed that the World Health Organization has launched a myth busters page to debunk them.

The likelihood that you believe any of these myths can be predicted by certain key characteristics. In the UK, the older and more educated you are the less likely you are to believe coronavirus myths. But in the US, a key characteristic is political identity. 

New US polling conducted by one of us (de Bruin) in late March finds that, even when controlling for education and other variables, there is a statistically significant correlation between political identity and the number of COVID-19 myths people believe: Republicans tend to believe more coronavirus myths than Democrats.

More than 1000 US citizens were given a list of statements about the coronavirus and asked to indicate which statements they believed, if any.  They were also asked to provide information about themselves, including their political identity and educational attainment. 

Believing that the threat is marginal may correlate with holding that there are simple measures for avoiding infection and an easy cure for those who fall ill.

And in some cases, the contrast in the results was stark; 50% of participants who identified as Republican believed that garlic prevented coronavirus, as opposed to one in three Democrats.