Abstract
In a survey among 250 subjects recruited at a German university and predominantly university students, we elicit opinions about social distancing, i. e., the necessity to keep away from other people to slow down the speed of the ongoing SARS-CoV-2 epidemics. The good news is that most students are supportive to it. A minority, however, does not completely agree. We find that how many elderly persons subjects knew personally, was the most significant factor for their attitudes toward social distancing. We also found a significant negative impact of believe in conspiracy theories on these attitudes. These theories have a non-negligible number of proponents, even among university students. Moreover, a certain degree of mistrust to media is widespread (around a third of the subjects). To improve positive attitudes to social distancing and thus to improve compliance we recommend therefore to emphasize relations of persons to elderly people in health communications more and to continue fighting against fake news and conspiracy theories regarding SARS-CoV-2.
Highlights
The current pandemics of the new type of coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, poses a global challenge
There was, a small minority who disagreed entirely, in particular 8.9% thought that the soccer game was “total okay” or “not optimal, but understandable” and 4.0% thought it was “rather bad” or “not acceptable” to complain to a friend about him not conforming to social distancing
In this article we have presented results from a current survey on attitudes of German university students regarding social distancing in the context of the ongoing coronavirus crisis
Summary
The current pandemics of the new type of coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, poses a global challenge. As of writing of this paper, in most countries around the world an exponential growth of cases and deaths is witnessed, with the notable exception of China where the disease started initially (David et al, 2020; Lu et al, 2020) and where it currently seems to be retained. Social distancing is key here: only if people don’t meet with their friends and relatives, spreading can be reduced (Wilder-Smith and Freedman, 2020; Wu and McGoogan, 2020). This can obviously only work if people comply with that
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