Don’t Expect Trump’s Diagnosis to Change the Minds of Pandemic Skeptics

Read: The probable outcomes of Trump’s diagnosis

Any swings in opinion might hinge on the severity of Trump’s illness (which could become clear in the next week). “If Trump appears to have [only] mild symptoms, this may reinforce the [false] narrative that the virus is like a flu or a bad cold, and only serve to give more fuel to the fire that the response to the virus has been overblown,” said Rachael Piltch-Loeb, a fellow at the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health.

“In an alternate scenario, if Trump gets very sick,” Piltch-Loeb said, “perhaps it could change the perception. But I still think this will be unlikely, because assuming he beats the disease, there will be a narrative of his strength that reinforces many of his prior messages about himself.” If Trump ends up dying from the disease, maybe that would change how his supporters regard it, but even then, maybe not.

Perhaps even more important than Trump’s condition will be how he communicates about it. “A key driver of COVID-19 denial among Trump voters has been verbal cues from Trump, such as questioning the severity of the disease and mocking mask wearing,” said John Cook, a researcher at George Mason University’s Center for Climate Change Communication. “My guess is Trump will minimize his symptoms both to portray an impression of physical strength and downplay the severity of COVID … So I’m not optimistic [that his test result] will make much difference.”

Already, even without any sustained messaging from the president, inaccurate narratives spinning the test result have sprung up online. The conservative commentator Wayne Allyn Root predicted on Twitter that Trump’s eventual recovery from COVID-19 will become a “teachable moment” that exposes the folly of “ignorant weak cowardly” Democrats, who view the virus as a lethal threat. And according to Business Insider, some supporters of the QAnon conspiracy theory doubt the truth of Trump’s announcement and are taking it as a coded signal that he has chosen to lie low in advance of a monumental reckoning that will take down a powerful network of shadowy wrongdoers.

The existence of these story lines illustrates how people will often take any development, no matter how clear-cut, and twist it to reinforce their own worldviews. “I think personal experience [with the virus] is the only thing that will change minds at this point,” Banas said. And even that might not work: Given that Trump has often “refuse[d] to change or admit fault” during his presidency, Banas wouldn’t be surprised if Trump didn’t revise his view of the coronavirus after contracting it.

Joe Pinsker is a staff writer at The Atlantic, where he covers families and relationships.