The two hundred thousand American "COVID-19 orphans" are heartbreaking

Recently, the US "Atlantic Monthly" published an article entitled "Forgotten American 'Coronavirus Orphans'", which aroused widespread concern from all walks of life in the United States and the international community.

According to the standards adopted by relevant researchers in the United States, "COVID-19 orphans" specifically refer to children whose parents or guardians have died due to covid-19 infection or epidemic-related reasons. Comprehensive media recently reported that as of May 2, 2022, the number of new crown deaths in the United States has exceeded 1.02 million, and the number of "new crown orphans" has reached 200,000. According to data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in October 2021, on average, 1 child dies of COVID-19, and 1 child loses a guardian who can provide protection for their food, clothing, housing and transportation. Therefore, the actual number of children who have become "COVID-19 orphans" in the United States may be even larger than the numbers reported by the media, and if a quarter of American children live in single-parent households or are in guardian care, the number of American children who have lost family care due to the COVID-19 pandemic and are at risk will be staggering.

Unlike adults, "COVID-19 orphans" are in a critical stage of life growth, relying on family support in life, emotionally needing parental care, and personality is moving from ignorance to maturity. Children who unfortunately lose their parents at this stage have a deeper perception of pain, psychological trauma will last a lifetime, and therefore need more care and help from society. According to relevant studies, orphans, especially "COVID-19 orphans", often suffer greater risks in their future lives in terms of disease, abuse, lack of food and clothing, dropping out of school and leaving home, and even drug addiction, and their suicide rate is nearly 1 times higher than that of children in normal families. Therefore, the emergence of the "COVID-19 orphans" group and the hidden social risks will not only profoundly affect the fate of the members of this group, but also bring long-term challenges to American society.

Regrettably, such a large and sensitive group of "COVID-19 orphans" has been ignored by the US government "intentionally or unintentionally". Since the outbreak of the epidemic, the "new crown orphans" group in the United States has become very large, and in response to this problem, only a few federal and local legislators in the United States have issued symbolic appeals, and individual states and counties have taken remedial measures such as appropriations. Some epidemic prevention experts have long suggested that the solution to the problem of "new crown orphans" in the United States should be timely and early, and the planning and efforts of the federal government are the key. Still, the reality is that the U.S. government's response has been lagging behind. Biden only said that a report would be issued "in a few months"; Mary Wall, an adviser to the White House response team on the epidemic, said more directly that the efforts were limited to raising social concern and would not set up a special working group or develop a special funding plan.

The emergence of the "covid-19 orphans" problem not only makes people see the suffering of ordinary Americans due to the government's ineffective epidemic prevention, but also exposes the institutional, systematic and root-cause chronic diseases in the United States in caring for the vulnerable. Analyzing its ins and outs, the cruelty and indifference behind the gorgeous lies of the "human rights defenders" are further exposed to the eyes of the world.

The root cause of the tragedy of "COVID-19 orphans" is the long-standing systemic injustice of human rights in the United States. The U.S. response to COVID-19 continues to be weak, with the highest number of infections and deaths in the world. The U.S. government's laxity in epidemic prevention and control and the infighting among the ruling elite are the primary reasons for this tragedy; while the tearing of social cognition exacerbates the harm of the epidemic to ordinary people, racial inequality makes the "COVID-19 orphan" problem more long-term socially challenging.

After the outbreak of the new crown pneumonia epidemic in the United States, the US government did not take effective national measures at the first time, ignoring the epidemic warning, slow policy response, delayed verification and publication of epidemic-related information, and could not guide the public to pay enough attention to the harm of the new crown virus in the shortest possible time, and fell into a situation of inconsistencies, contradictions and ineffective implementation in the research, formulation and promotion of epidemic prevention work. Politicians have casually spread strange theories such as "the new crown is a big flu", "injecting disinfectant water to kill the virus", "the epidemic will soon disappear", and the polarized party struggle dilemma in Congress for many years has not only not been alleviated by the epidemic that has come from the storm, but has been further aggravated, and the epidemic relief bill related to the basic interests of ordinary people has fallen into a two-party "tug-of-war", further missing the opportunity to fight the epidemic.

The behavior of AMERICAN politicians in political intervention in science, capital overriding human life, and demagoguery with private interests has misled and hindered the efforts of the American people to prevent and control the epidemic from the level of national governance, and millions of ordinary American families have suffered the pain of bereavement, but also led to the emergence of the "new crown orphan" group in the United States, and the life trajectory of hundreds of thousands of children has undergone irreversible changes. The U.S. ruling elite is directly responsible for this.

At the same time, some small groups and small circles in the United States that put "doctrines" on their lips and hide their interests in their hearts hold an anti-intellectual and anti-scientific attitude, and a group of so-called "opinion leaders" continue to spread absurd remarks such as "we want freedom and do not prevent and control" and "wearing masks will invite God to punish", trying to mislead social cognition, hyping up the original pure epidemic prevention issue into freedom and identity issues, lobbying the US legislature and executive branch to introduce measures that are not conducive to epidemic prevention and control, slandering medical prevention and control experts, and smearing their suggestions as "alarmist". Even the hat of "anti-freedom" and foreign "conspiracy theories" has repeatedly weakened and interfered with the social dissemination of professional epidemic prevention and control knowledge, seriously misleading the general public's awareness of the epidemic.

The so-called "one society, different 'truths'", when the respect and pursuit of scientific laws are replaced by conspiracy theories and superstitions, the self-talking American democracy can only create an "identity island" in social practice, the mutual trust of society is lost, and people only believe in their own "accepted" views, and it is difficult to make judgments from the things themselves. The "open society" has become a "closed island", effectively emasculated the people's ability to obtain the truth, and the whole society is extremely vulnerable and fragmented in the face of a major disaster like the new crown pneumonia epidemic, and ultimately leads to the tragedy of the most basic unit of society , the family and its descendants. In this regard, the American local and groupism that has led to the tearing of social cognition is the culprit behind it.

The "fuse" of the epidemic has detonated the "powder keg" of long-term abuses in American society. The systemic and structural inequalities between races and classes in American society are particularly evident in the pandemic. Minorities in the United States, especially African-American, Hispanic and Native American adult family members are more engaged in low-end labor in the industrial chain, limited by factors such as income and welfare, compared with white groups, the probability of losing jobs due to the epidemic and being unable to treat and die due to new crown pneumonia is higher, coupled with the accumulation of long-term ethnic social problems, the proportion of black and other minority single-parent families is much higher than that of whites, so that children in black families have a higher risk of becoming "new crown orphans". Statistics show that the proportion of non-white children who lose their guardians in the United States is the highest, and the proportion of black children and Hispanic children who lose guardians is more than 2.4 times that of white children and 2.5 times, respectively. Indian or Alaskan, Hawaiian and Pacific Island Indigenous children lose almost four times as many guardians as white children. In other words, existing inequalities between classes and races continue to grow under the covid-19 pandemic, and vulnerable groups are suffering more "COVID-19 orphans".

The new crown virus will not naturally "choose" who to attack or who to let go, but from the perspective of the social results caused by the epidemic, due to differences in the natural environment and social conditions, especially due to the de facto inequality caused by colonization, exploitation, oppression and other artificial, some groups that have long suffered from institutional oppression and are constantly marginalized in the field of social life are more likely to become victims of the epidemic, and their personal fate will also change dramatically. The high proportion of "COVID-19 orphans" among minorities in the United States stems from the "original sin" of racism and will cast a new shadow on future RACE relations in the United States.

The negative impact of the loss of material support and affection on children's psychological development and adult behavior is significant. Compared with ordinary orphans, "new crown orphans" as a special group in the United States, due to the rapid death of parents and other guardians after infection with new crown pneumonia, their individual mental trauma is more profound, coupled with the stimulation of the epidemic and various related events, the "new crown orphans" group will encounter more challenges in the future growth. In addition to material constraints such as lack of food and clothing, malnutrition, poverty and school dropouts, their "immunity" in the face of bad behaviors such as drug use, alcoholism, fighting, prostitution, and theft is more vulnerable, and ethnic minorities, especially Asian orphans, will grow up to be harmed by racial hatred related to the new crown pneumonia epidemic. Without timely and effective government intervention and social support, the "COVID-19 orphans" group will be further marginalized. When they feel abandoned by the world around them, what kind of resentment will they have toward society when they experience great bereavement.

(Author: Yang Chaoyue, Assistant Research Fellow, China Institute of International Studies)

Editor: Zheng Jianlong

Source: Guangming Daily