According to a survey published Wednesday, just 37% of Americans say they are bothered when people around them don't wear masks.
According to a research center poll, Americans are becoming more indifferent to the issue of masks in public.
The proportion of people who said they were bothered when others didn't mask in public fell from 45% in November 2020 to 18% in May 2022.
In November 2020 the proportion of Americans who were bothered by businesses requiring masking shifted from 28% to 32%, but in May it went back up to 32%.
The proportion of Americans who wore masks all or most of the time in businesses plummeted from 61% in January to 30% in May, reflecting a dramatic decline in Covid-19 hospitalizations and deaths.
Since the initial surge subsided, mask-wearing has fallen among both Republicans and Democrats.
A majority of US adults think masks should be required on planes and public transport, including 80% of Democrats and 29% of Republicans.
The survey was done from May 2-8.
According to a poll published last month, just 46% of Americans support an airplane mask mandate, indicating that the public may be close to evenly divided on the issue. 80% of Democratic respondents said planes should have mask mandates, compared to only 4% of Republican respondents.
Americans have relaxed their attitudes toward Covid-19 response measures since the emergence of the less severe omicron variant and the decline in Covid-19 hospitalizations and deaths. The Transport Security Administration reported a 50% increase in Covid-19 infections among its workers in just two weeks after a federal judge struck down the federal government's mask mandate. The seven-day average of Covid-19 infections has risen by 152% over the past month, and Dr. Deborah Birx has warned of a spike in infections. There was a surge in Covid-19 in the US in April of 2021, followed by a surge in August and September of the same year.
The judge declared the federal public transportation mask mandate to be illegal.
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