You know things are going badly when you get a poll like this and it’s not your worst poll of the day.

I’m also going to guess that there might be some correlation between Biden’s approval on COVID sinking to 40 percent and his overall job approval sinking to 39.8.

He got elected promising to restore normalcy by “shutting down the virus,” after all. If you can’t do one, you can’t do the other.

The hopeful story that Dems can still themselves about this result is that it may represent rock bottom. Public opinion tends to lag events; what we’re seeing here, in all probability, is Americans reacting belatedly to the mind-boggling surge in cases caused by Omicron and all of the staffing problems that stemmed from it in January. As cases abate and Democratic officials press their new “back to normal, sort of” message, the numbers should improve.

The less hopeful story is that these numbers don’t represent the public’s view of COVID, they represent the public’s confidence that Biden will respond effectively to future twists in the pandemic. If so, the numbers might not improve as cases do. In which case, uh oh.

About as many Americans now say public health officials, such as those at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, are doing an only fair or poor job responding to the coronavirus outbreak as an excellent or good job (49% vs. 50%). pic.twitter.com/dtTIaU0o5l

— Pew Research Center (@pewresearch) February 9, 2022

Trump’s lowest rating on COVID in this same Pew poll was 35 percent. Biden is now within striking distance of underperforming the guy whose underperformance got him elected in the first place. COVID had traditionally been one of Biden’s stronger issues in polling, too. Although he’s under 40 percent in overall approval today in RCP’s average, he’s at 43.6 percent approval on the pandemic. If this new Pew data suggests a new downward trend from that, hoo boy. Duck and cover in November.

Another possibility is that Biden’s rating is being dragged down by the incompetence of his own public health bureaucracy. Note which group in the graph above saw the sharpest drop in support since August. You can blame that on figures like Rochelle Walensky, who seemed to back Biden’s call for boosters early last fall before reversing and demanding more data, a delay that cost lives after Omicron arrived. The CDC also botched its guidance on how long one should quarantine after testing positive, encouraging people whose symptoms were “resolving” on day six to mask up and get back out in public — even if they hadn’t tested negative again yet. Since August, Americans who say they’re “confused” by changing public health recommendations has risen from 53 percent to 60.

When a team plays poorly, it’s the coach who takes the brunt of the criticism. Same here with Coach Joe and the varsity science team, maybe.

But there’s more to it. Here’s one of the more amazing poll results I’ve seen in awhile:

It’s extremely unusual for one party to move steadily in one direction on an issue while the other party holds steady. Typically the parties move in opposite directions due to partisan polarization; sometimes they each hold steady at their respective baselines due to firm ideological differences. There is some partisanship at work in the graph above, with Republicans’ faith in public health officials taking a hit once Biden’s team replaced Trump’s in January 2021. But as you can see, GOP opinion about the CDC was in steady decline even before then. And meanwhile, despite their fear and loathing of Trump, Democrats’ faith in public health officials has barely budged since the start of the pandemic.

My guess is that that data is a reflection of the two parties’ views of COVID precautions. The science brain trust has been pro-restriction from start to finish; so have Democrats, which explains why their opinion of the experts hasn’t budged. Republicans, however, were open to restrictions at the very beginning but have grown steadily more disillusioned ever since with both the rules themselves and the experts who consistently champion them. It’ll be fascinating to see what happens to Democrats’ faith in the experts as the Leana Wens and Scott Gottliebs out there defy them by encouraging elected officials to finally, finally relax restrictions. Democratic pols who have traditionally deferred to the hypercautious federal health bureaucracy have already begun to break away, in fact, which is beginning to produce awkward moments for the White House:

REPORTER: "Does the CDC run the risk of becoming irrelevant in the minds of many Americans given that their states are moving along ahead without them?"

PSAKI: "I don't think the federal experts on health and medical advice should be irrelevant to Americans…" pic.twitter.com/JWHeV6F05M

— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) February 9, 2022

Why don’t Phil Murphy and other Democratic governors want to stick with their base and follow the science as articulated by Walensky? Because they have a good reason not to. The Times writes today about Murphy being “stunned” by his surprisingly narrow reelection victory in November and scrambling to find out what had gone wrong. “Arranging a series of focus groups across the state to see what they had missed, Mr. Murphy’s advisers were struck by the findings: Across the board, voters shared frustrations over public health measures, a sense of pessimism about the future and a deep desire to return to some sense of normalcy.”

Democratic officials love “the science” but only up to the point that it begins to threaten their job security. See you around, Rochelle.

By the way, Pew also finds today that the partisan vaccination gap is abiding. Bigly, as Trump might say:

That’s around 90 percent of Dems with one shot versus 64 percent of Republicans. The share of GOPers who’ve been boosted is a bit more than half the share of Dems, and equal to the share of Republicans who haven’t had any shots at all. That helps explain why trust in public health officials among righties began to sink even before Trump left office: Many Republicans feel more strongly about vaccination than they do even about Trump, refusing to get jabbed even though the vaccines were approved by Trump-appointed experts and repeatedly endorsed by Trump himself. Especially since there are always people out there willing to tell them what they want to hear on the subject even if, for once, Trump himself isn’t.