Sad indictment of US' misplaced focus

Before US President Joe Biden took office, the record of daily infections of the novel coronavirus in the United States was 294,015, on Jan 8. At that time, with a large-scale vaccination campaign to be launched, many in the country supposed that to be the historical record.

Although the average daily infections this year has been below that figure, it has remained at a high level of about 250,000, and a new record was set on Tuesday when 543,928 people contracted the virus in the country.

As of Thursday, the accumulative total number of COVID-19 cases in the US has hit 54.58 million, among which about 840,000 people have died of the disease. And it is projected that the number of deaths caused by COVID-19 in the US will reach 866,000 by Jan 22 next year, the one-year anniversary of Biden taking office.

It should not be forgotten that the Biden administration regards COVID-19 pandemic prevention and control as its primary task, since that is seen as a way to distinguish itself from its predecessor.

Yet, thanks to the high attention it paid to taking advantage of the pandemic to scapegoat, smear and contain China, rather than contain the virus at home, the focus has never been on uniting US society to fight against the virus.

The Biden administration's impotence to resolve political antithesis, social tensions and anti-intellectualism is self-evident, and it has lost people's confidence that it can lead an effective campaign against the virus.

Pathetically, neither the previous Donald Trump administration nor the Biden administration has the audacity and honesty to stand up and take responsibility for the country's failed responses to the public health crisis.

If people's lives cannot be protected, human rights are out of the question. The heavy costs the US people are paying for the raging COVID-19 pandemic, which as the experiences of many other countries show is controllable and preventable, form the backdrop against which the Biden administration lectures other countries on human rights, particularly China, where the most recent death due to the virus was in January 2021.

That the US administration would rather spread lies about "human rights abuses" in China's Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region and Hong Kong and employ people willing to tell lies to that effect, as "witnesses, victims and researchers" than save its own people's lives exposes its hypocrisy in teaching other countries about values and principles.