Images of New Yorkers lost to the COVID-19 pandemic are projected onto the Brooklyn Bridge in New York, the United States, March 14, 2021. (Xinhua/Wang Ying)
BOTCHED ENDEAVORS AGAINST COVID-19
While bragging about the progress it has made in inoculating the American people, the United States is still the country with the world's most infections and deaths.
According to the Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University, U.S. COVID-19 deaths have reached 601,826 and the number of confirmed cases has exceeded 33 million as of Sunday.
Most of the infections and deaths could have been prevented if the U.S. government had played its due role in leading its people to exercise coordinated and stringent anti-COVID measures, instead of attempting to shift responsibilities and sling mud at other countries.
For months, despite repeated warning and advice of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), U.S. authorities had been refusing to urge people to wear masks and maintain social distancing.
Data speak for themselves. With a population of less than 5 percent of the world's total, the United States accounted for more than 18 percent of all the confirmed cases and more than 15 percent of the deaths as of Sunday.
"It is a slaughter," William Foege, epidemiologist and former head of the U.S. CDC, said in a letter, denouncing the U.S. government for politicizing the fight against the deadly pathogen.
