Infected by reality

 In July, a researcher at the Brookings institution reported that plans for remote vs. in-person school reopening were unrelated to the Covid case rate in the district, but were related to vote in the 2016 election--the higher the support for Trump, the more likely in-person reopening.  Later I found a survey from about the same time (July 16-20) which asked people "When the school year begins where you live, do you think each of the following types of schools should open for in-person instruction as usual, open with minor adjustments, open with major adjustments, or not open at all for in-person instruction."  Opinions about the K-12 schools by party identification:

                               Usual or minor adjustment             No in-person

Democrat                       6%                                              44%

Republican                   43%                                             12%

Independent                  26%                                             23%

Other/None                  27%                                             29%

(I omit the "major adjustments," which was 45-50% in all groups).    

So partisanship apparently had a strong effect on views.  The natural follow-up question is how much effect local conditions had.  I got weekly death rates by state as reported by the CDC.  It seemed that death rates in the two weeks before the survey were related to opinions, but previous death rates were not (I used the square root of death rates because it produced a slightly better fit).  In states with higher recent Covid death rates, people were less inclined to support opening as usual.  Did the effect of local conditions differ by party?  People sometimes talk about Republicans inhabiting a "bubble" through which information doesn't penetrate, but the point estimate for the effect of state death rates is about twice as large among Republicans as among Democrats and independents, although the difference is not statistically significant (t-ratio of about 1.5).  Estimated opinions by party and state death rates (higher values mean more support for online-only):

The more important point is that the difference in opinions between the states with the lowest and highest death rates is only about half as large as the difference between Republicans and Democrats.  The data are at the state level, and in some states the prevalence of Covid may differ widely within the state, so the estimated effect of local conditions may be attenuated by measurement error.  Still, it seems that party matters more than reality.

[Data from the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research]