People walk in Times Square in New York, the United States, on Aug. 9, 2020. The total number of COVID-19 cases in the United States surpassed the 5 million mark on Sunday, according to the Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) at Johns Hopkins University. (Xinhua/Wang Ying)
U.S. COVID-19 cases passed a grim new milestone of 5 million on Sunday with soaring new infections, further highlighting the deep-rooted problems of U.S. society and casting doubt on Washington's behavior amid the ravaging pandemic.
The United States has registered 5,041,473 cases and 162,913 deaths as of 0000 GMT on Monday, according to a tally by Johns Hopkins University.
There are few signs that the spread is slowing down in the United States.
HUGE LOSS OF HUMAN LIFE
Even though it enjoys the greatest economic strength and one of the most advanced medical systems in the world, the United States became the hardest-hit country soon after the global outbreak of the pandemic.
Early warnings from other parts of the world did not prompt the country to take timely measures and make coordinated efforts to fight the virus.
COVID-19 has now become the leading cause of death in the United States, killing more people per day than cancer or heart disease, according to a graph published in Newsweek on April 9. The disease has killed more Americans than the Korean War, Vietnam War, War in Afghanistan and Iraq War combined.
Some U.S. politicians' disregard for human life, the deep-rooted racial inequity as well as the ever-widening wealth gap have exacerbated the dire situation.
In order to downplay the scope and danger of the pandemic, U.S. President Donald Trump has repeatedly claimed that the United States has one of the lowest COVID-19 mortality rates in the world.
However, the reality is that the United States has a mortality rate per 100,000 higher than many other countries, including Canada, Germany, France and the Netherlands, according to a recent article published by The Hill.
"But Trump is not focused on those numbers" and he has been fixated on a figure called the case fatality rate (the percentage of people who die after contracting COVID-19) in order to confuse people and cover up the extremely high rate of deaths as a proportion of the population, according to the article.
What's more, the country's vulnerable groups, including the elderly, the poor, African Americans and Latino Americans, have borne the brunt of COVID-19 and remain most at risk.
In at least 23 U.S. states, a majority of deaths were linked to nursing homes, according to The New York Times. As of July 15, deaths in long-term care facilities accounted for more than 42 percent of the country's pandemic fatalities.
Ben Shapiro, editor-in-chief for The Daily Wire, an American right-wing news website, suggested in an interview on April 30 that old people's lives are not worth saving.
"If somebody who is 81 dies of COVID-19, that is not the same thing as somebody who is 30 dying of COVID-19 ... If grandma dies in a nursing home at age 81, that's tragic and it's terrible, also the life expectancy in the United States is 80," he said.
Minority populations have also been disproportionately hardest hit by the coronavirus in the country.
However, despite the call of public health experts to prioritize minority communities in tackling the virus, the Trump administration has not taken enough actions.
As of June 12, non-Hispanic black persons had a rate of infection of or death from the coronavirus approximately five times that of non-Hispanic white persons, while Hispanic or Latino persons had a rate approximately four times that of non-Hispanic white persons, said the U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in a statement on June 25.
