Nearly half of California voters are not worried at all about themselves or a family member being exposed to the Ebola virus, according to a USC Dornsife/Los Angeles Times poll released Friday.
The poll found that 46 percent of California voters are “not at all worried” about Ebola exposure, while 24 percent said they are “not too worried.”
According to the poll, 18 percent of Californians said they are “somewhat worried,” and 12 percent are “very worried.”
Among Latino voters, 52 percent said they were “not to worried” or “not at all worried” about being exposed, while 26 percent were “somewhat worried” and 22 percent were “very worried,” the poll found.
“California is both geographically and psychologically distanced from the rest of the country,” according to Dan Schnur, director of the Unruh Institute of Politics at USC. “If there were an Ebola case on the West Coast, I suspect the level of concern would be much greater. But voters also show they are fairly confident in the infrastructure for dealing with an outbreak, from their local health care providers up to the federal level.”
The poll also found that:
— 68 percent of voters have a “great deal or fair” amount of confidence in local hospitals and doctors to deal with Ebola, while 28 percent said they have not much or no confidence;
— 60 percent said they had confidence in first responders to handle Ebola, while 35 percent had little or no confidence;
— 49 percent said they were confident the federal government could deal with the virus, while 39 percent said they had little or no confidence; and
— 56 percent said they were confident state government can properly handle the virus, versus 39 percent who had little or no confidence.
— City News Service