World
Report reveals whether the U.S. is "No. 1" in COVID-19 response
By Tao Xing  ·  2021-08-16  ·   Source: NO.33 AUGUST 19, 2021
 
A cyclist passes by a COVID-19 testing clinic in New York City, the U.S., on August 3 (XINHUA)

America Ranked First! In June, when Bloomberg changed the metrics of its COVID Resilience Ranking to "accommodate the shift in COVID-19 management," this was done to lift the U.S. from May's 13th place to the top spot in the index, a system in place since last November and updated monthly.

America Ranked First? Wang Wen, Executive Dean of the Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies at Renmin University of China, said the obsession with being "No.1" goes against facts and human ethics.

As of August 12, the U.S. reported more than 36 million cumulative confirmed cases of COVID-19, including more than 610,000 deaths, according to data from Johns Hopkins University. In terms of both numbers, the U.S. ranks first in the world.

On July 30, the number of COVID-19 cases in a single day in the U.S. exceeded 100,000, a first since February 6, when the number of new daily cases first crossed the benchmark.

Previously, when writing to Robert Redfield, then Director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, on September 23, 2020, William Foege, former director of the organization, criticized the U.S. administration's response to the virus, and said, "Don't shy away from the fact this has taken an unacceptable toll on our country. It is a slaughter and not just a political dispute."

These truths, and what American titans said, have been recorded in a research report entitled America Ranked First?! The Truth About America's Fight Against COVID-19. The exposé was made public on August 9 by three Beijing-based think tanks.

Wang said at the report release conference that such American media's rankings are unhelpful for mankind to keep a true perspective of world history in the future. "We made the report to protect the truth for the next generations and provide references and experiences in fighting the virus."

Why the U.S. failed 

Data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development in 2018 showed the U.S. spent more on healthcare than any other country in the world—as a percentage of GDP.

With such a high proportion of health expenditures, the U.S. should have been the world's best equipped nation in the fight against COVID-19. However, the U.S. Government's efforts in pandemic prevention and control, policy measures and virus source investigation ran contrary to science and common sense. These are the direct underlying reasons for the U.S. being a "failed country in terms of fighting the pandemic," the report said.

It spread misinformation on anti-intellectualism through various channels such as White House press conferences, mass media outlets and social media. "Former President Donald Trump may well have been the biggest promoter of COVID-19's false information," said Song Xiaofeng, Secretary General of Taihe Institute, one of the three think tanks.

According to a Cornell University study, by May 26, 2020, some 38 percent of fake news about COVID-19 in English media mentioned Trump. These remarks not only greatly misled the American people and underestimated the actual menace of the virus, but many were left seriously hurt by trusting the absurd remarks.

For example, at the beginning of the crisis, Trump called COVID-19 a case of the "flu." He further fumbled on by saying that soon there would be a "flu vaccine against it," indicating that the COVID-19 pandemic would "suddenly disappear" with the warming up of the weather. On the matter of whether ordinary people should wear masks to prevent the spread of the virus, the U.S. Government also failed to convey the information correctly.

Moreover, the U.S. had failed to issue a unified policy and remained unable to achieve a consolidated national plan to combat the pandemic, the report further read.

In March 2020, Trump said he was considering issuing mandatory quarantines on behalf of the federal government for three states with severe outbreaks, including New York. Andrew Cuomo, then Governor of New York, strongly opposed it as he considered this "a declaration of war by the federal government on these states." Since Democrat Joe Biden assumed the presidency, he has been pushing for "mask mandates" and vaccinations. Yet the Republican states and the federal government still find themselves in deep conflict.

In addition, the U.S. Government does everything to save the stock market rather than the people. According to the report, the Federal Reserve took "extraordinary" measures to increase money supply. In fact, the U.S. in a year and a half printed nearly half of all the dollars for more than 200 years. Countries around the world had to bear the burden of inflation, instability, and "bubble" pressures that they should not have suffered.

Global spillover 

William Jones, Washington Bureau Chief for Executive Intelligence Review, told the conference that America's politically inclined vaccination game has only moved the world farther away from victory over the virus.

The report stated that in the early stages of promoting COVID-19 vaccination, the U.S. engaged in "vaccine nationalism" and created an "immunization divide," politicizing vaccine cooperation, and impeding joint global efforts on vaccines, treatment as well as prevention and control. Such actions made it difficult for poorer countries to obtain vaccines, leading to an imbalance in the global supply.

According to The Washington Post, the U.S. is stockpiling COVID-19 vaccines, culminating in significant waste.

The U.S. has turned a global public health disaster into a major power tussle by politicizing scientific issues such as the anti-pandemic model, the origin tracing of the virus, and the efficacy of vaccines, shifting the blame onto the outside world and misleading the international community. 

From Trump's "Wuhan virus" cliché to Biden's claim that the novel coronavirus escaped from a Chinese laboratory, the U.S. has caused great damage to public opinion, Martin Jacques, a former senior fellow at Cambridge University, said at the conference. Jacques also expressed his worries that the U.S. would continue to politicize the issue.

Washington has strongly promoted the so-called virus tracing in other countries, allegedly coercing the World Health Organization (WHO) and a number of scientists to give up their impartial positions in an attempt to make them kneel before hegemony, the report said.

However, and ironically so, the timeline for early cases to emerge in the U.S. is being refreshed. The Associated Press has reported that a study based on the analysis of 24,000 American blood samples collected in early 2020 shows that COVID-19 infections were already present in the U.S. in December 2019, a few weeks earlier than the first confirmed case in the nation.

The report calls on the U.S. to allow an international team of experts organized by WHO to conduct site visits and investigations of the Fort Detrick bio-laboratory to effectively advance scientific tracing efforts and dispel any external questions about the lack of transparency in the U.S.  

(Print Edition Title: A Real Ranking) 

Copyedited by Elsbeth van Paridon 

Comments to taoxing@bjreview.com 

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