On January 27, the U.S. Government Accountability Office, an independent investigative agency under the U.S. Congress, released its ninth comprehensive investigation report on the COVID-19 outbreak.
The 238-page report named and criticized the U.S. Treasury Department, Office of Management and Budget, Food and Nutrition Administration, Internal Revenue Service and other government departments for their poor response to the outbreak, and also included the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) in the " High Risk List".
The "High Risk List" is a list of federal government agencies investigated for "deception, profligacy, corruption, mismanagement or need for transformation" and is published every two years at the start of a new session of Congress.
According to the U.S. Government Accountability Office report, HHS was included on the list because an investigation found that the agency's response to public health crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic was critically inadequate.
HHS has long been a regular on the US Government Accountability Office's "high-risk list."
Since 2007, the bureau has put forward a total of 115 rectification opinions on HHS, but only a small part has been implemented so far, and 72 items have not been implemented.
After the outbreak of the new crown pneumonia, the bureau was even more active on HHS, one of the major health departments in the United States.
At a news conference on January 28, GAO Director Gene Dadoro said: "Our recommendations on the outbreak in our latest report, as well as many of our previously published recommendations, show that the government needs to do There is still a lot of work to do.”
Obviously, the responsibility for the ineffectiveness of the United States in fighting the epidemic cannot be entirely borne by a certain institution. This accountability report reflects the general disappointment of the American society with the government, and the resulting "responsibility".
According to data released by Johns Hopkins University, as of February 15, the United States had reported a total of 77.8 million confirmed cases of the new crown and 920,000 deaths.
In addition, the U.S. is experiencing a pandemic-related economic crisis, including worsening inflation and supply chain disruptions.
Biden's failed anti-epidemic goals
"Looking back at the anti-epidemic goals the president set a year ago, it is clear that he has not defeated the new crown virus as promised." The Washington Post wrote in an article published on January 24.
The day after he was sworn in as US president, Biden ambitiously released a 200-page National Strategy for New Coronary Pneumonia, proposing many anti-epidemic commitments, and winning praise at the time: "Inspiring! "Foresight!" Before this, the Trump administration has never proposed any clear anti-epidemic plan.
A year later, NPR invited a number of health experts to sort out and compare Biden's main anti-epidemic goals and actual results.
The first major goal of the National Strategy for COVID-19 is to "rebuild the trust of the American people."
Before the COVID-19 pandemic, American society was already seriously polarized, and the people were full of distrust of the government.
During Trump's tenure, the government has engaged in political manipulation, and public information asymmetry has been confusing and even inconsistent, further eroding public trust.
Experts say the Biden administration has not made much more progress than the previous administration in terms of public trust.
Compared with 2020, the American public's trust in the government has improved slightly, but it is still hovering at a historically low level.
According to a recent survey in early 2022, less than half of respondents trust U.S. public health agencies such as the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention).
Biden's second main goal is to carry out comprehensive vaccination.
It is undeniable that compared with the Trump era, the Biden administration has indeed made some progress in expanding vaccine supply and promoting vaccination. A total of 500 million doses of vaccines have been vaccinated in one year, and 75% of Americans have received at least one dose of the vaccine. , which can be regarded as the most dazzling achievement of Biden's anti-epidemic action.
However, Harvard University health expert Michelle Williams believes that the current vaccination rate cannot meet the current anti-epidemic needs. More than 60 million Americans who are eligible for vaccination still refuse to be vaccinated, but the government "does nothing for them."
The third goal is to contain the spread through mass testing and clear public health standards.
Michael Fraser, chief executive of the American Association of State and Local Health Officials, said that although the federal government hopes to implement unified epidemic prevention measures across the country, the US health system is decentralized, and states and counties are doing their own thing.
The mandatory vaccine plan launched by Biden also suffered a major setback not long ago-the White House required companies with more than 100 employees to vaccinate or conduct nucleic acid tests for employees, but this motion was rejected by the Supreme Court.
"Our guidance on masks is not uniform; our testing approach is not uniform; our medical resources are not uniform; supplies are not uniformly distributed to states because of supply shortages -- that's our system," Fraser said.
The fourth goal is to protect vulnerable populations and narrow the gap between race and urban and rural areas.
At the beginning of the outbreak of the new crown pneumonia in the United States, people of color and poor areas had limited access to medical resources, and the infection rate and death rate were high.
Although Biden has formed a task force to address inequality during the pandemic, the price of masks and nucleic acid tests remains unaffordable for many.
"It doesn't make sense for low-income families to pay $12 to $20 for a rapid home test," Williams said.
The fifth goal is to restore American global leadership.
Biden had pledged to donate more than 1 billion doses of vaccines to the world, but experts said that the vaccine donations in the United States were neither sufficient nor timely.
The U.S. has donated just 330 million doses of the vaccine through January 2022, and the more the world's unvaccinated population grows, the more likely the virus will mutate.
"We've missed one deadline after another for vaccination," said Celine Gundel, an epidemiologist at New York University. "The government has made big promises that have yet to be delivered."
Biden's failure to fight the epidemic stems from the shortcomings of the US political system
According to the results of an opinion poll jointly released by CBS and the survey agency Public View in January this year, the number of respondents who believe that Biden "has dealt with the epidemic effectively" has dropped from 67% in March last year to no. To 50%; only 36% of the respondents believe that "the United States' anti-epidemic work is currently progressing smoothly."
Biden's performance in dealing with the epidemic has greatly affected his public opinion ratings.
In a national poll conducted by the US "political" news network in February, 43% of people approved of his overall performance in his first year in office, while 51% did not approve of his performance, of which 37% gave He scored a minimum of "F".
This "achievement" is almost the same as Trump's during the same period.
According to a January 25 survey by the Pew Research Center, 43 percent of people concluded that Biden would be an "unsuccessful president," while only 20 percent believed he would be a "successful president."
According to a survey conducted the year Trump took office, 41 percent thought Trump "won't make it," and 23 percent thought he "would make it."
In other words, the American people have more pessimistic expectations of Biden than Trump.
Compared with other U.S. presidents, Biden's "honeymoon period of public opinion" is exceptionally short.
Biden's approval rating has hovered below 50 percent since August 2021, when U.S. troops were wobbly withdrawn from Afghanistan and the Taliban regained power.
According to the results of a number of opinion polls, in addition to the poor response to the epidemic, Biden's points of loss include: failure to formulate benign economic policies; failure to effectively handle the crisis in international relations; failure to effectively address the problems of the judicial system; failure to communicate with Congress Effective cooperation; not getting immigration issues right.
And what the American people are most disappointed with Biden is his failure to deliver on his promise to bring America back together — at this point, 69 percent expressed distrust of him.
Analysts generally believe that the challenges Biden faces in dealing with the epidemic and other government affairs are beyond his ability; Biden's "inaction" is the result of the interaction of multiple factors.
The "Washington Post" pointed out that the decentralized power system in the United States makes Biden constrained in the process of implementing the plan, and he is restrained by various forces.
For example, the "mandatory vaccine order" was banned by the Supreme Court, and the call to "fight disinformation" was opposed by Republicans.
The repeated pulling of various forces has provided the new crown virus with opportunities again and again.
When the mutant strain breaks through the immune barrier provided by the vaccine, even the most advanced technology will be defeated in the face of politics.
As the famous scholar Fukuyama said, American society is deeply polarized, and it is difficult to reach a consensus on almost any issue.
What started as polarization, often reflected in traditional bipartisan values such as taxation and abortion, has morphed into a fierce battle over cultural identity.
In the past, major crises like the COVID-19 pandemic were an opportunity to unite Americans, but at a time of severe polarization, the COVID-19 crisis has instead exacerbated divisions and divisions in American society.
Measures such as maintaining social distancing, wearing masks, and getting vaccinated are actually seen as signs of political stance, rather than scientific means of prevention and control.
The "competition" between China and the United States needs to compete for who can solve domestic problems better
"The United States is the strongest country in the world in terms of economy, science and technology, public health, biomedicine and other resources, but its response to the new crown pneumonia epidemic is the worst." In the Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies of Renmin University of China in February At the forum held on the 15th, Wu Zunyou, chief epidemiologist of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, raised a question: "The United States is so powerful in science and technology, why is the epidemic prevention and control effect so poor?"
Wang Wen, executive director of the Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies, believes that the failure of the prevention and control of the new crown pneumonia epidemic has exposed the loopholes in the United States' public health and epidemic prevention capabilities and the insufficiency of national capabilities, weakened the soft power of the United States to lead the world, and accelerated the decline of American hegemony.
He said: "It is a pity that the United States does not recognize the new crown pneumonia epidemic as the latest cause of damage to the national strength of the United States and accelerated decline of the United States. On the contrary, the United States government keeps blaming China, using China as a 'scapegoat' for its failure to fight the epidemic, Unveiling a new Cold War in an attempt to unite an already divided American society."
Wang Wen pointed out that in the past 100 years, the GDP of the United States has always been the first in the world.
In the past 100 years, there have been many crises around the world, such as World War I, World War II, the Middle East war, the Iraq war, the oil crisis, the terrorism crisis, and so on.
In all of these crises, the United States has presented itself as the world's "savior" and "leader." Only in the COVID-19 crisis is the United States not the world's leader.
"What's worse is that, instead of being a world leader, the United States is not even protecting itself -- that is America's greatest tragedy."
Wang Wen emphasized that the development of the new crown pneumonia epidemic has once again reminded the United States and China that the virus is the common enemy of the two countries, and the long-term threat of infectious diseases to China and the United States is far greater than that of war.
The "competition" between China and the United States is not about "who suppresses who", but about "who can solve their own problems better". Infectious disease prevention is a very important part of it.
This newspaper, Beijing, February 16th
China Youth Daily, China Youth Daily reporter Hu Wenli Source: China Youth Daily