A politically squabbling fight against covid-19 – a perspective on america's response to COVID-19

Source: Xinhua Net

Xinhua News Agency, Beijing, January 18 Title: An Anti-epidemic War Full of Political Disputes - A Perspective on the Difficulties of the United States' Response to the Covid-19 Epidemic

Xinhua News Agency reporter Sun Yi

According to the statistics of the new crown epidemic released by Johns Hopkins University on the 17th, the cumulative number of confirmed cases in the United States exceeded 65 million, and the cumulative number of deaths exceeded 850,000, which is the country with the largest cumulative number of confirmed cases and cumulative deaths in the world.

The United States has the world's leading medical technology and sufficient medical resources, but in the process of fighting the epidemic, political disputes are constant, the government is in a dilemma, the epidemic is worsening, and many American people's rights to life and health have been seriously violated. Wave after wave of outbreaks, one amazing new record after another, highlights the fact that the United States' fight against the epidemic has gone from failure to failure.

The "democratic" system is once again in trouble

The British "Guardian" published an article saying that the US political system has been unable to operate efficiently, because the trust of the US government at all levels in the federal government has declined, and cyberspace is full of radical speech. Moreover, the flaws in the power structure of party politics in the United States have fundamentally created an institutional crisis.

The confrontational nature of the US political system is very obvious in the current era of the new crown epidemic and sharp social contradictions, forming political polarization, intensifying political differences and power struggles within the United States, and becoming an insurmountable obstacle to effective and scientific decision-making.

Last year, after a new wave of outbreaks in the southern states with low vaccination rates, US President Joe Biden issued a vaccine injunction, which was scheduled to be implemented on January 4 this year, but several Republican state governments took the matter to court and called off the injunction.

Under the new crown epidemic, the US system has aroused public doubts. A December poll by Schoen Cooperman Research, a U.S. poller, found that 51 percent of respondents believed that U.S. democracies were in danger of dying, with those aged 18 to 29 experiencing the strongest fears.

The "entropy increase" is lost

"Entropy" was originally a physical concept that represented the degree of disorder or randomness of a system. The higher the entropy, the more chaotic it is. Throughout the history of the world, the operation of some governments is facing the "entropy increase trend" from governance to chaos, and how to explore the "entropy reduction mechanism" of coordination between all parties and get rid of mutual prevarication is a major issue facing many governments. Apparently, the United States did not submit a qualified answer sheet.

University of North Carolina associate professor Zenip Tufikci commented in the New York Times that the outbreak proved to be like a stress test for nearly two years, but the United States failed.

The United States implements federal, state and local government governance, and public health matters such as the new crown epidemic belong to the state powers of each state, with state and local governments as the main management. The "bulk" decentralized system has made the United States face huge obstacles in responding to the epidemic, and the federal and state governments are independent and mutually constrained, and it is difficult to quickly integrate resources and coordinate the response.

As the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States is getting worse, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has reduced the recommended quarantine period for asymptomatic covid-19 patients from ten days to five days. In this regard, the American Medical Association said on the 5th that doctors are generally worried that these recommendations of the US CENTERS will put patients at risk and may further overwhelm the medical system, isolated personnel need to test and ensure that they are negative to end isolation, and the US CDC guidelines will further exacerbate the risk of virus transmission.

As of the 15th, nearly 40% of the population in the United States is still not fully vaccinated. Carlos Del Rio, vice dean of emory University School of Medicine and professor of epidemiology, said that vaccine injunctions are very important for the United States, but there are many oppositions. If the United States could roll out a unified response to the outbreak, the results would be very different. Unfortunately, the "politicization of the fight against the epidemic" has been a major problem in the United States since the beginning of the epidemic, and this situation will continue.

In the case of such a weak fight against the epidemic, US politicians do not reflect on their shortcomings, but instead open the "throwing pot mode" to stigmatize the epidemic and label the virus. In this regard, David Robertson, a virus research expert at the University of Glasgow in the United Kingdom, said: "The main point I want to say is that it (virus traceability) is no longer regarded as a science [in the United States]."

On January 10, 2022, healthcare workers work at a new drive-thru-19 testing center in Los Angeles County, USA. (Xinhua News Agency)

Social rifts have intensified

When the epidemic is raging, should we "save people" or "save the market" first? Which is more important, epidemic prevention and control and economic recovery? At a time when the new crown virus is still raging, the above dilemmas are among the mandatory questions in the global anti-epidemic examination. In this American-style fight against the epidemic, saving the economy is more important than saving people's lives, saving the stock market is more important than saving the epidemic, and the selfish nature of capitalism has been exposed.

Neoliberalism promotes a laissez-faire market economy, and in the past few decades, the economic governance of the United States has been deeply influenced by neoliberal ideas, and the people's livelihood in the "Rust Belt" area and the prosperity of Wall Street have become the epitome of imbalance. In this regard, the American economist Heather Bush pointed out that to completely transform the US economy, policymakers should understand that the market cannot perform the function of government.

Most medical institutions and health insurance companies in the United States are privately owned, and the cost of health care is high, with about 25 million vulnerable people who cannot afford insurance. A large number of infected people become a source of infection because of the lack of access to timely treatment, exacerbating the spread of the virus. Some medical institutions have even acquiesced to the "selective treatment" of poor, minority COVID-19 patients.

According to the U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Hispanic Americans are twice as likely to contract COVID-19 as whites and 2.3 times more likely to die from COVID-19; Native Americans and African-Americans are also at higher risk of CONTRACTing COVID-19 and dying than whites.

While a large number of low-income groups are under pressure from unemployment, poverty, and high risk of infection, from March 2020 to January 2021, the total wealth of more than 600 American billionaires increased from about $2.947 trillion to $4.085 trillion, an increase of 38.6%, thanks to the generous bailout of the U.S. government.

In addition, some politicians have taken advantage of the anti-intellectual and populist ideology in the United States to spread various anti-scientific statements in an attempt to throw away the responsibility of the government's ineffective epidemic prevention.

"The fact that the United States has performed so badly in the fight against the epidemic is a profound indication of how decayed our institutions and capabilities have decayed." Tufikci commented.