What have you learned about how we might deal with crises in the future?

Should we just leave it with a chuckle and the show there?

Rufold chuckle, music.

Hello and welcome to the 538 Politics Podcast.

I'm Galen Druke.

Since just about the beginning of the pandemic,

we've noted on this podcast that partisanship was shaping Americans' perception of risk

and their behavior.

Polls showed there were divisions over things like wearing masks and reopening businesses,

and studies of mobile phone data confirmed that Republicans and Democrats were,

to some extent, living their lives differently.

A Pew survey of 14 countries last summer showed the US to be the most politically divided

of those 14 countries over its own handling of the coronavirus.

Throughout this process, both Republicans and Democrats have accused each other

of ignoring the science. Early on, President Trump's rejection of many mitigation efforts

was seen as a reason that the US was surpassing much of the rest of the world

in COVID deaths per capita.

Later, Democrats' reluctance to reopen schools didn't seem to jive with data showing that

schools, especially for younger kids, were largely safe.

The consequences of those policies are almost certainly not the same,

but the way that partisanship forms our belief systems is likely similar.

Today, we're going to dig into how partisanship has been shaping perceptions of the pandemic

...