Public Opinion on Imposing Border Control and Lockdowns

Many sectors took hits as the pandemic rampaged throughout the world. In line with this, many people lost their jobs as businesses started to cease operations. More so, health organizations were also affected by high numbers of cases for some time. Moreover, the world was in a panic. However, humans are blessed with the capability to adapt.

Most importantly, at the end of 2020, cases seemed to slow down for some countries and living conditions started to go back to normal. However, just recently, a new coronavirus strain started to surface. Because of this, countries tightened their borders to deal with the issue. With this, the Real Research team conducted a survey to shed light on people’s opinions regarding this topic.

Highlights

• Almost 80% of respondents are aware of the new coronavirus strain
• More than 60% of participants are aware of new lockdown plans within England
• 3% agree with the stricter measures, while 16.7% disagree
• More than 150,000 agree that countries may close their borders and impose travel bans, while less than 50,000 disagree
• More than 50% believes that lockdown measures will affect their lives

Awareness of New Coronavirus Strain

One way to fight the pandemic is through awareness. Likewise, if people keep themselves informed on the latest developments, they can perform actions that prevent the spread of the virus. In addition, if the majority of people do this, it may slow down the spread of the virus significantly. With this, we asked the participants if they are aware of the new coronavirus strain surfacing in Europe.

As you can see in the figure above, almost 80% are aware of the new strain.  On the other hand, 20% are not. This shows that the efforts of governments and news platforms have been efficient in spreading awareness with COVID-19 developments.

Lockdown Plans in England: Are You Aware?

Aside from awareness of pandemic-related developments, knowing regulations imposed by governments is essential as well. This may determine going through with personal or work-related plans. Therefore, we asked participants if they are aware of the plans of imposing another lockdown in England.

When it comes to awareness of lockdown plans, “Yes, I am aware” got the most number of votes getting 61.9% of the participants. After this, “No, I am not aware” took second place with less than 40% of users picking the option. These results show that the respondents in the survey have easy access to news and are very informed.

Stricter Measures: Truly Necessary

Specifically, as cases rose, stricter measures were implemented in a number of countries. Is it really necessary or is it too much? We asked the participants what they think and we got the results found below.

Remarkably, 83.3% of people agree that stricter measures are necessary. On the other hand, 16.7% do not agree that we need stricter measures. As the majority agrees with the lockdown measures, the data shows that people are in agreement with government decisions regarding stricter measures.

On Closing Borders and Imposing Travel Bans

Is it necessary to close the borders and impose travel bans? Do countries have the right to do this? Therefore, we asked the respondents about their opinion on this issue.

Figure 4. Do you agree or disagree that your country’s government may close its borders and implement a travel ban to protect the nation from the pandemic? As you can see in the image above, more than 150,000 respondents agreed that countries may close borders and impose travel bans to protect their nations from the pandemic. Remarkably, this comprises 77.4% of all respondents. On the other hand, less than 50,000 disagreed — which accounts for 22.6% of the participants.

How the Lockdown Will Affect Lives

We already witnessed how lockdowns can affect our lives through the initial lockdowns of various countries due to the pandemic. Additionally, how likely can another lockdown affect our lives? We asked the respondents this question to gauge the effects of lockdowns in their lives. Following after, we gathered the data found below.

The majority of respondents (more than 50%) answered that this will likely affect our lives. Similarly, respondents answered, Very Likely (28.8%) and Somewhat Likely (21.9%). Around 32.5% are neutral. Meanwhile, 16.9% answered that it’s unlikely.

To sum up, we can infer that after experiencing lockdowns, people believe that it is likely to affect our lives. Surprisingly, a small number believe that it will be unlikely to affect our lives — this goes to show that some have adapted to the lockdowns that happened previously.