The rejection of the Corona rules drives people onto the streets and inspires conspiracy theories. But the skeptics are clearly in the minority: Overall, there is a lot of approval for the precautions - and only relatively few suspect other goals behind them.
Berlin (dpa) - The backing for the protective measures against the corona virus remains high: only one in ten thinks they are superfluous, according to a recent survey by the opinion research institute YouGov on behalf of the German press agency.
For this purpose, people were surveyed online between August 7 and 10, 2018. Three percent of those surveyed consider protective measures to be superfluous because they believe the virus is "not that dangerous". Seven percent also see warnings and protective measures as an "attempt by powerful circles to achieve other goals". Another 16 percent are in favor of protective measures, but consider the currently prescribed regulations to be excessive. Around two thirds (68 percent) declared the currently prescribed protective measures to be absolutely necessary. Opponents of the precautionary measures took to the streets in German cities over the past weekends.
Almost three quarters of those surveyed stated that they knew the exact regulations for protection against infection, such as contact restrictions and mask requirements. About a fifth said no. Women were clearly more informed than men.
The support for the mask requirement has grown visibly since the end of May. Then, as now, almost exactly half found the mask requirement in shops or public transport in its current form just right. A quarter and thus significantly more people would like to expand it to other areas of life. At the end of May, only 13 percent were in favor. Fewer respondents wanted to completely abolish the obligation (14 percent) or relax it (10 percent). A few weeks ago, these values were 19 and 14 percent. So while a third of people had reservations back then, it is only a quarter today.
For the initiative of the North Rhine-Westphalian state government, according to which violations of the mask requirement in local public transport should be sanctioned with a fine of 150 euros without prior warning, 56 percent of the respondents agreed. Around a quarter think the fine is correct, but it would be in favor of a warning before those affected are asked to pay. 13 percent refused to pay a fine.
The Federal Government's crisis management met with consistently high approval. Two thirds (66 percent) were either more or very satisfied with it. 29 percent were rather or very dissatisfied. Polls in April showed very similar results. At the end of March, only 54 percent had rated the actions of the black-red cabinet headed by Chancellor Angela Merkel in the crisis rather positively.
© dpa-infocom, dpa: 200812-99-134055 / 2
