What they’re saying: “It’s ‘America retrenches,'” said Cliff Young, president of Ipsos U.S. Public Affairs. “People all of a sudden are being assaulted again by the virus and therefore they’re changing. And if they’re not, somebody very close to them is.”

“The shifts are so significant across the board,” said Ipsos vice president Mallory Newall. They represent “a revert back to basically last April when people were bunkering because a majority weren’t vaccinated yet.”

A combined 52% of all respondents now say they believe it will be more than a year — or never — before they can return to their normal, pre-COVID lives. That’s the highest since we began asking this question nearly a year ago.

About three-fourths said they feel they face as great a risk or more risk of contracting the virus now than in the spring of 2020.