U.S. bungled COVID-19 response a globally recognized fact

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Against the backdrop of Washington's repeated blame game and vicious slanders, China's State Council Information Office released a white paper on Wednesday titled "COVID-19 Prevention, Control and Origin Tracing: China's Actions and Stance."

Clearly, while the Chinese government has been acting responsibly in the global fight against the virus, the U.S., as the world's largest economy with advanced medical technologies, has ironically turned out to be the worst-performing country in handling the pandemic.

America's response to COVID-19 is, without doubt, a big failure.

In the early stage of the pandemic, the U.S. government repeatedly downplayed the severity of the transmission, insisting the novel coronavirus pneumonia was a case of "bad flu," which could disappear automatically. Washington's nonchalance toward the virus has directly resulted in a high infection rate on American soil.

By mid-April 2020, confirmed COVID-19 cases reached 660,000 in the U.S., but American politicians, in an attempt to secure economic growth and thus more votes in the general election, falsely claimed that the country had "passed the peak" and rushed to open its economy.

American lawmakers' choice of political gains over ordinary people's lives explains the country's soaring death toll. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the pandemic killed more than 1.13 million across the U.S. by May 2023 – 16.4 percent of global deaths. The figure is appalling for the world's superpower endowed with advanced medical personnel, resources and technologies.

The American elderly bear the brunt of their government's nonfeasance. Eight out of 10 COVID-19-related deaths reported in the U.S. have been among people over the age of 65, according to AP reports.

As a developed country, the U.S. saw its life expectancy constantly drop during the pandemic, from 78.8 years in 2019 to 77 in 2020 and 76.1 in 2021. By comparison, China has seen its figure rise from 77.3 years in 2019 to 77.93 in 2020 and to 78.2 in 2021.

But this is not what the U.S. government cares about. Washington deprived citizens of their right to be informed to secure selfish political gains for the election. Since March 3, 2020, the CDC and other governmental institutions have stopped releasing key data on COVID-19. As a result, the public had to rely on private entities such as the Johns Hopkins University for pandemic information.

Despite this, Washington's failure to handle the COVID-19 pandemic remains clear and cannot be concealed. To shirk its responsibilities, Washington has never ceased its efforts in blame-shifting.

Take the country's interactions with the World Health Organization (WHO) as an example. As early as early 2020, the WHO warned the U.S. of a "possible pandemic on a larger scale." America's domestic policies, which prioritize selfish political gains over ordinary people's right to life, not the WHO or other countries, are to blame for the country's poor performance in the pandemic.

However, insisting that the WHO's response was the culprit, the U.S. suspended funding for the organization in April 2020. On January 20 this year, the U.S. again announced its withdrawal from the WHO "due to the organization's mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic."

At a time when global cooperation is urgently needed to combat the common enemy of COVID-19, Washington's withdrawal from the WHO has been harshly criticized across the globe. "Every scientist, every health worker, every citizen must resist and rebel against this appalling betrayal of global solidarity," Richard Horton, editor-in-chief of the Lancet medical journal, said, criticizing Washington's withdrawal as a "crime against humanity."

Viruses know no borders. The U.S., as the world's superpower, is supposed to shoulder its due responsibility in curbing the virus. But regrettably, it is acting the other way around, failing to respond in a timely manner and shifting blame onto others. The U.S. government should better reflect on itself rather than repeatedly weaponizing the virus for political gains.

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