Belief Disagreement and COVID-19 Health Risk: Virus Incidence, Vaccine Uptake, and Closure Response in Israel

Abstract

We employ comprehensive field data from Israel for March 2020 – August 2021 to study how political belief affects COVID-19 vaccine resistance, virus transmission, and response to closure policy. We identify households that likely hold divergent political beliefs based on statistical area voting patterns in Israel’s 2020 national election. These data are matched to a statistical area panel of all vaccination and infection cases in Israel and to socio-economic and demographic controls. Results indicate substantial variation in COVID-19 disease and treatment outcomes among those holding divergent political beliefs and across virus variant epochs. Findings further show that a common public signal about local virus health risk is differentially acted upon depending on political belief. The estimated effects of political belief largely reverse in the wake of diffusion of the COVID-19 Delta variant and among remaining vaccine-resistant population. Results underscore the importance of timely, belief-targeted interventions to damp virus spread.