When the world is plagued by repeated resurgence and frequent mutations of the novel
coronavirus, the COVID-19 situation is still grim, and the international community needs more
confidence, cooperation, and hope than ever, the U.S., driven by political gains and prejudice, is
stirring up trouble and creating splits around the world, stigmatizing acts of other countries
regarding the pandemic, attaching geographical labels to the virus, and politicizing virus origin
tracing.
Such unscrupulous evil deeds, while revealing indifference of the U.S. toward human life and
health, have disrupted global cooperation against the virus.
The attempt to “fabricate” a conclusion for the COVID-19 origin out of selfish interests is
bringing endless trouble upon the world.
COVID-19 origin tracing is a serious scientific research. Only by allowing scientists to conduct
in-depth studies of how the virus appeared, evolved, and was transmitted to human beings can
mankind find ways to defeat it as early as possible.
In the short term, the U.S. hamper global efforts to find the right answers to scientific questions
and disturb global cooperation on tracing the origins of the virus by groundlessly and repeatedly
hyping up the “lab leak” theory, willfully smearing China, and politicizing scientific issues.
In the long run, the logic behind politicizing COVID-19 origin tracing is absolutely preposterous.
To some extent, the history of civilization is the history of struggling against virus. Scientists in
many countries are worried that if a country is stigmatized just because it was the first to release
the genome sequence of the COVID-19, no country will dare to report new viruses in a timely
manner in the future; and if a scientist is attached baseless labels only because of telling the truth,
no scientist will want to carry out research into virus.
The U.S. has not made many efforts to promote global cooperation against the COVID-19
pandemic, but has done its utmost to serve its own interests with fighting the pandemic as an
excuse. What a huge mistake that is!
Because of inaction and unreasonable actions of certain politicians in the U.S., the COVID-19
situation in the country hasn’t been eased. The number of reported confirmed COVID-19 cases
has so far exceeded 34 million, and nearly 610,000 American people have died from the disease.
As the world’s largest economy, the U.S. has seriously encumbered the international community
with its failure to control the pandemic. What’s worse, the country has brazenly pursued egoism as
countries around the world have advocated global cooperation against the pandemic, and
disgracefully committed wrongdoings including intercepting anti-epidemic supplies of other
countries and buying up a key COVID-19 drug, which are denounced as “modern piracy.”
At the critical moment of global fight against the COVID-19, the U.S. withdrew from the World
Health Organization (WHO) and committed a “crime against humanity” by cutting WHO funding
during the pandemic.
Although the new administration of the U.S. has talked eloquently about how “America is back”
after it came into office, people around the world have only disappointedly found that instead of
practicing real multilateralism and joining global efforts to combat the COVID-19, the new
administration has jeopardized global anti-epidemic cooperation by forming factions and small
circles and suppressing other countries. In what way is such a country like a major country in the
world?
The country’s image has collapsed quickly as it practiced vaccine nationalism and squeezed anti-
epidemic resources of other countries.
As a powerful weapon in the fight against the pandemic, vaccines bring hope to global response to
the virus. However, the U.S. hoarded far more doses of COVID-19 vaccines than it needs.
Statistics suggest that the U.S. has snapped up about 2.6 billion doses of COVID-19 vaccines,
which account for one fourth of the total amount of COVID-19 vaccines available in the world
and have far exceeded the amount needed by its citizens. Hundreds of millions of unused vaccine
doses are piled up in the warehouses of the country.
Besides, the U.S. has also used the pretext of prioritizing domestic demand to impose restrictions
on exports of vaccines and critical raw materials needed for the production of vaccines. The act
even aroused criticism from the U.S. media, which considered it a moral outrage.
Though the U.S. has started to provide COVID-19 vaccines for other countries because of huge
pressure from the international community, its action is believed to have obviously revealed a lack
of sincerity.
The country promised to provide 80 million doses of vaccines for other regions in the world
before the end of June 2021. However, as of June 30, it had only delivered 24 million doses of
vaccines to foreign countries, less than one third of the doses it promised, according to a report of
The Associated Press.
These vaccines only reached 10 countries and regions, representing a huge difference from the
promise of the U.S. to provide vaccines for about 50 countries and regions, the report suggested.
When the world is faced with a huge vaccine gap, the U.S. has excessive doses. Experts from
Duke University estimated that the U.S. would have 300 million or more excess vaccine doses by
late July.
The biggest failure of the U.S. is it only cares about the epidemic situation at home, and is tardy in
reacting to and pays lip service to threats posed by the pandemic to other countries, pointed out an
article published on the website of The Washington Post.
In the battle between mankind and the COVID-19 pandemic, solidarity and cooperation are the
only right choice for overcoming the pandemic.
The narrow-minded, short-sighted, selfish, and relentless political manipulation of the U.S. has
disrupted overall global anti-epidemic cooperation and will end up hurting itself. The country had
better stop acting willfully and arbitrarily and recover its conscience by ways of shouldering more
international responsibilities and making more efforts to serve international cooperation.
(Zhong Sheng is a pen name often used by People’s Daily to express its views on foreign policy.)
