Wu Guangqiang jw368@163.com AS the COVID-19 pandemic is raging its way into 2022, the third year after its breakout, instead of mitigating, it is deteriorating rapidly, with the highly contagious Omicron variant bringing infections and deaths to horrifying heights. Globally, daily cases are shooting up by the millions! By Jan. 11, more than 310 million people had been infected and 5.5 million killed. In the United States, infections and deaths had exceeded 60 million and 840,000, respectively. On Jan. 3, a staggering 1.02 million cases were reported. Humans have been assailed by massive plagues many times in history, but none is as devastating as this one. Advanced transport systems facilitate the fast spread of the virus. So far, except for China, which has largely contained the pandemic by extinguishing every sporadic outbreak before it escalates into a major epidemic, much of the rest of the world has failed in combating the virus, especially the United States and its followers, whose efforts to control the disease is a sheer fiasco. Some factors are reasons for their failure. Humans’ scarce knowledge of the novel coronavirus is partially blamed. But it doesn’t let U.S. and European leaders off the hook, for they have been politicizing pandemic since the very begging of the outbreak. There have been two separate wars against the pandemic: China’s all-out battle and America’s chaotic attack. If the United States had done as China did, the pandemic would have been eradicated. Unfortunately, the scourge is getting from a trickle to a tsunami. Washington is responsible for the exasperating global situation. The primary cause is ideology-driven ignorance and arrogance in Washington and London, etc. Contrary to China’s science-based and people-oriented attitude toward the disease, the masters of the White House, No.10 Downing Street and their counterparts in other European capitals have behaved like a bunch of capricious kids with half-formed and changeable ideas. Rather than focus on combating the disease in a professional way, they turned the life-and-death issue into a personal show and a reckless gamble. They place partisan and individual interests before those of the people and ignore the lives and health of their people. Here are just a few counts of their ridiculous words and deeds since the very beginning of the pandemic. No sooner had the novel coronavirus struck Wuhan, China offered all the information about the virus, including the genetic sequences, to the World Health Organization and the rest of the world. But the United States was indifferent. “The risk to the American people remains very low,” said former U.S. President Donald Trump. The United States did nothing in preparation for the looming plague but cutting off U.S.-China flights, thus wasting nearly a month of valuable time. Assuming that the disease would not bother medically advanced countries like theirs, some Western politicians gloated over China’s misfortune, claiming that the best weapon against the virus was democracy and freedom. Before long, their preposterous assertion became a laughing stock. When the situation got out of control in their countries, however, their complacency and inertia soon became chaos and panic. At home, confusing policies on anti-pandemic measures have practically left any efforts ineffective. Internationally, Washington has attempted to blame its failure on China by spreading the rumor of the virus leaking from a laboratory in Wuhan. Some Western politicians even clamored for China’s compensation for their loss. These advanced countries’ reckless and unprofessional assessments and guidelines have been dominating the whole process of their fight against the pandemic. For example, mandatory mask-wearing policy was not issued until the disease was out of control. Their leaders kept giving green light to resumption of normal life based on over-optimistic predictions, claiming certain variants were mild and the pandemic would soon be over. Such immature and irresponsible behaviors have led to the persistence of the pandemic. When unable to control the disease, they resorted to “herd immunity” strategy. Many countries are adopting the so-called policy of “coexistence with the virus.” All this is a reflection their incompetence and inaction. However, they have so far refused to take any effective steps to tame the pandemic, such as calling an international conference to work out a global program. In addition, U.S. media are still questioning China’s success in containing the pandemic. They are the biggest victims of the poison of their own making. (The author is an English tutor and freelance writer.) | 