Since the outbreak of COVID-19, the United States has been the country with the largest number of confirmed cases and deaths in the world for quite a long time. After experiencing the "dark moment" in January this year, the United States has ushered in the fourth wave of epidemic since mid-July. According to data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, as of the 14th EDT, there were more than 41 million confirmed cases and more than 660,000 deaths in the United States.
Why does the United States have world-class medical resources, but it has encountered the "Waterloo" against the epidemic? Since last year, many institutions have resumed their efforts to reflect on the mistakes of the US anti-epidemic strategy. To sum up, from the release of epidemic information, the implementation of epidemic prevention measures, the treatment of patients, the statistics of epidemic data, and the distribution of vaccines and other medical materials, the United States has been in chaos in every link of epidemic response, which not only caused the virus to wreak havoc in its own territory, but also brought great damage and challenges to the overall situation of global epidemic prevention.
The "root cause" behind these phenomena is the deep-seated defect of American political system and values.
One of the "root causes": the party strives for greatness.
In the United States with a two-party system, some politicians always put party interests above people’s lives, health and safety. The COVID-19 epidemic has become a "weapon" for the two parties to attack each other, and the "power game" between politicians has brought great damage to the fight against the epidemic.
As early as the beginning of January, 2020, the National Security Council of the United States has received an alarm, predicting that the COVID-19 epidemic will occur in the United States and may develop into a "global pandemic". However, in order to keep the economic and employment figures "good-looking" and win the support rate, the Republican government at that time deliberately played down the epidemic warning, restricted medical experts from releasing information to the public, and even misled the public by publishing false information, saying that COVID-19 was a "pandemic flu", and the risk and mortality rate of virus infection were "very low", which led to the "golden window period" of epidemic prevention and control being wasted.
The Democratic Party is just a drop in the bucket, and some Democratic Party officials spend more energy on "bickering" than on fighting the epidemic. Cuomo, the former governor of New York, who was forced to resign due to a sex scandal not long ago, severely accused the federal government of inaction at the beginning of the epidemic, and his support rate soared. However, according to a survey released by the Attorney General of New York State in January this year, Cuomo’s own report greatly reduced the death toll of COVID-19, a nursing home in the state.
The anti-epidemic policy has also become a "bargaining chip" for party struggle. Politicians of the two parties frequently engaged in tug-of-war around nucleic acid testing standards, whether to wear masks, whether to return to work, the distribution of medical materials and the provisions of the rescue bill, which delayed the implementation of anti-epidemic measures. The website of Time magazine reported in May last year that 90% of COVID-19’s deaths were caused by the slow social isolation measures in the United States.
The second "root cause": "bulk" system
The United States implements three levels of government governance: federal, state and local. Public health affairs such as COVID-19 epidemic belong to the state power of each state, and are mainly managed by state and local governments. The "bulk" decentralization system makes the United States face great obstacles in responding to the epidemic. The federal and state governments are fragmented and constrained each other, making it difficult to quickly integrate resources to coordinate the response.
The U.S. federal government’s anti-epidemic measures lack mandatory provisions. Since March last year, States have announced their own "home orders", but some States are eager to restart in April and May. In April last year, seven states on the east coast, such as New York, formed a "multi-state agreement", and three states on the west coast, such as California, formed a "western state agreement", which did not accept the leadership of the federal government and coordinated epidemic prevention and resumption of work on its own.
The lack of guidance of the federal government on the protection of epidemic prevention materials and the confusion of financing and deployment have led to the war of grabbing epidemic prevention materials among the federal, state and local governments. At the peak of the epidemic last year, New York, California, Illinois and other countries rushed to buy ventilators, constantly raising prices among themselves, and even making conflicts and blaming each other.
Claybourn, chairman of the Subcommittee on Coronavirus Crisis of the U.S. House of Representatives, criticized that six months after the outbreak of the epidemic in the United States, the U.S. government has not yet formulated a unified national strategy to protect people’s health, and the direct consequence is that the anti-epidemic pace of each state is different.
The third "root cause": the life gap
Most medical institutions and medical insurance companies in the United States are private, and the high medical cost has long been criticized, while the US government has neither the will nor the ability to change the dominant position of capital. Capital priority and interest priority make people’s right to life and health not equally guaranteed. The so-called "beacon of democracy" left a new record of human rights violations in the epidemic. For example, some medical institutions acquiesced in "selective treatment" for COVID-19 patients, and poor people, ethnic minorities and other vulnerable groups were given up treatment first.
According to an article published on the British Guardian website, in front of Covid-19, the rich and powerful groups in the United States have priority to be rescued. In a survey conducted by Gallup Consulting, 14% of American adults said that if they or their family members had symptoms related to COVID-19 infection, they would give up treatment for fear that they could not afford the treatment.
According to data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in June this year, the risk of Hispanic Americans being infected with COVID-19 is twice that of whites, and the risk of dying from a new crown is 2.3 times that of whites; Native Americans and people of African descent are also at higher risk of contracting COVID-19 and dying than whites. Adams, former director of the American Public Health Bureau, said that the mortality rate of African-American COVID-19 was much higher than the overall mortality rate, not for physiological or genetic reasons, but because of social factors, which made African-Americans more susceptible to infection.
The epidemic has hit the American economy hard, a large number of people have been unemployed for a long time, and contradictions such as polarization between the rich and the poor and ethnic conflicts have further intensified, making life more difficult for the bottom people. Studies by the University of Chicago and the University of Notre Dame show that the poverty rate in the United States rose rapidly from 9.3% in June last year to 11.7% in November of the same year.
The Atlantic Monthly commented: "It is not Covid-19 that has torn the United States, but the epidemic has exposed the tearing of the United States."
The fourth "root cause": social polarization
Some groups in the United States unilaterally emphasize individual freedom. The effect of wearing masks, social isolation, vaccination and other measures to curb the epidemic has long been proved in science. However, in the United States, whether to implement these measures has become a dispute of values and has risen to the level of "infringement of individual freedom". Accompanied by anti-mask, anti-isolation, anti-vaccine and other protests, which seriously hindered the implementation of epidemic prevention measures. Differences in values are intertwined with partisan struggles, becoming more intense and polarized.
In April last year, some people in 20 states took to the streets to protest against the "home order" issued by the state government. Many protesters did not wear masks or keep social distance.
In the fourth wave of epidemic since July this year, the number of confirmed cases of new children in the United States has been rising, but many States are still deeply mired in the debate about whether masks should be forced to wear in schools. Florida Governor De Santis issued an executive order in July prohibiting schools from forcing students to wear masks, saying that the decision should be in the hands of parents.
The fifth "root cause": the United States gives priority.
COVID-19 epidemic is a public health crisis sweeping the world, which needs the joint efforts of all countries in the world. As the world’s number one power, the United States not only failed to shoulder its due international responsibilities, but allowed the virus to spread to other countries, allowing a large number of Americans to travel abroad during the rapid spread of the epidemic; Engage in "vaccine nationalism", hoard vaccines far exceeding the needs of its citizens and restrict vaccine exports; Announcing withdrawal from the World Health Organization at a critical moment in the fight against the epidemic, disrupting the overall situation of the international fight against the epidemic.
More than 660,000 people died, which failed to make American politicians reflect on the reasons for the failure of domestic anti-epidemic. Instead, they are eager to use the problem of virus traceability to blame China for "throwing the pot" to divert people’s attention. In order to use the issue of traceability to achieve political goals, the US government tried to pressure WHO to launch a "targeted traceability" against China, and also used intelligence agencies to concoct a so-called traceability investigation report.
Vladimir danilov, a Russian political observer, said that Washington is pursuing the "America first" policy in the most shameless way. "Concerns of other countries … … It is not considered by the Biden administration at all. "
All kinds of beggar-thy-neighbor behaviors are the embodiment of the foreign policy characterized by hegemonism and power politics pursued by the United States for a long time. The United States has always believed in "American exceptionalism", obsessed with advocating the superiority of its own system and values, and the actual behavior is the priority of its own interests. This hypocrisy of "saying one thing and doing another" has increasingly attracted the resentment of the international community.
"We are failing each other." In August this year, the weekend edition of USA Today reported the fourth wave of epidemic in the United States. If we don’t get rid of the deep-seated "roots" of political system and values, it can be predicted that the epidemic situation in the United States will be difficult to be effectively controlled. Xinhua News Agency reporter Zhang Ying
