About One-Third of Public Comfortable Returning to ‘Normal Routine’ — Roughly the Same Figure Since May

Retailers, restaurants and other places of business need consumers to start feeling safe enough to return to normal life if they have any hope of recouping the lost revenue incurred after months of social distancing and stay-at-home orders. New analysis of five-week trend data dampens a lot of those hopes.

Just over one-third of the public said they feel comfortable returning to their “normal routine,” according to Morning Consult’s most recent polling on the question, conducted right before the July 4th weekend. That’s roughly equal to the share who said the same in late May.

Levels of comfort were ticking up in early June but began to fall as U.S. coronavirus cases began to skyrocket amid the reopening of local economies. At the time of the poll, July 3 marked a new high for positive reported cases, with 57,718 recorded, per the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. July 8 set a new high, with more than 64,000 positive cases.

Though COVID-19’s death risk increases with age, there was no statistical daylight between generations for this question. That said, Gen Z adults experienced a swift uptick in their comfort level in mid-June — something not reflected in other generations — before dropping back to May levels in the most recent survey.