Full text: The Report on Human Rights Violations in the United States in 2021

I. A HEAVY PRICE FOR US EPIDEMIC PREVENTION AND CONTROL

Despite having world's most advanced medical equipment and technology, the United States has the biggest number of COVID-19 infections and deaths globally. The US government never rethinks its response measures and still lacks effective anti-epidemic plans. Instead, it stoked the origins-tracing of COVID-19, and has been keen on passing the buck, shifting the blame and political manipulation.

Disregard for people's rights to life and health. Since the outbreak of COVID-19 in the United States, the epidemic prevention and control has been highly politicized, which has become a tool and a bargaining chip for Republicans and Democrats to attack, reject and confront each other. US politicians focused only on their political gains in disregard of people's lives and health. The federal and local governments went their own way and constrained each other, which has not only made it very difficult to integrate and coordinate the management of medical resources, but also made people disoriented about epidemic prevention and control policies. And thus various anti-intellectual words and deeds that reject science and common sense have become prevalent. Misled by political manipulation, some Americans refused to wear masks, and even launched an anti-vaccine movement, which accelerated the spread of COVID-19. By the end of 2021, nearly 30 percent of Americans still had not been vaccinated, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The Associated Press (AP) reported on Dec 19, 2021 that US hospitals were overwhelmed as COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations caused by infections among the unvaccinated continued to surge. States, local governments and the public "have now been left out on their own," American news website Vox said on Jan 2, 2021. According to data from Johns Hopkins University, by late February 2022, the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in the United States had exceeded 78 million and the death toll surpassed 940,000. Its number of COVID-19 deaths recorded in 2021 has far surpassed the total for 2020. According to the analysis by researchers at the University of Southern California and Princeton University, the deaths caused by COVID-19 have reduced overall life expectancy by 1.13 years, the biggest drop since the Second World War. Life expectancy was estimated to fall by 2.10 years among African Americans and 3.05 years among Latinos, while the decline was 0.68 years among whites. The US government's unscientific, unequal and irresponsible epidemic prevention and control conducts have seriously undermined its people's rights to life and health. The New York Times reported on Nov 18, 2021 that the pandemic has proved to be a nearly two-year stress test that the United States "flunked," and that the American people's trust in their government has been "bankrupt."

People's mental health deteriorated due to the uncontrolled outbreak. A study published in The Lancet Regional Health -- Americas in October 2021 found 32.8 percent of US adults experienced "elevated depressive symptoms" in 2021, compared to 27.8 percent in the early 2020 months of the pandemic and 8.5 percent before the pandemic. According to a public opinion poll, more than a third of Americans aged between 13 and 56 said the pandemic is a significant source of stress in their lives. The poll finds teens and young adults have faced some of the heaviest struggles as they come of age during a time of extreme turmoil, the AP reported on Dec 6, 2021. US Surgeon General Vivek H. Murthy was cited by The Los Angeles Time as saying on Dec 9, 2021 that the number of suspected suicide attempts in 2021 was 51 percent higher among adolescent girls compared to the same period in 2019.

The number of the homeless is staggering. The Washington Post reported on Dec 7, 2021 that "homelessness is one of the United States' greatest current challenges, no matter the region." The AP reported on Sept 9, 2021 that the number of people without permanent shelter in Rhode Island had increased by more than 85 percent since January 2021. According to a report by the group Advocates for Children, more than 100,000 New York City schoolchildren were homeless at some point during the 2020-2021 school year. The total number of homeless students during the school year represented nearly one-tenth of the city's public school system. Some students had to live in cars, parks or abandoned buildings. The New York Times reported on Dec 19, 2021 that in San Francisco one of every 100 residents was homeless.

The elderly' rights to life are flagrantly violated. US politicians have followed the natural law of "selecting the superior and eliminating the inferior," declaring that "the elderly could sacrifice for the country" and that "the national economy is more important than the lives of the elderly." The US CDC said that the vast majority of US COVID-19 deaths have been among people aged 65 or older. According to Stat News, an American health-oriented news website, more than half a million elderly people in the United States have died from COVID-19, accounting for four-fifths of all fatalities. According to a report by Claudia Mahler, the United Nations independent expert on older people, on July 21, 2020, discrimination in the delivery of health care services, insufficient prioritization of nursing homes in responses to the virus, and lockdowns left older people more vulnerable to neglect or abuse. And there was "a significant undercount of nursing home deaths" in the United States during the pandemic.

Serious damage to the global anti-pandemic cooperation. Washington vigorously pursues "America First," not only withholding anti-epidemic materials from other countries, but also prohibiting the export of domestic medical materials and buying out the production capacity of drugs that may be used to treat COVID-19 patients. The United States has repeatedly coerced the WHO, interfering and dragging down global anti-pandemic cooperation.

The United States has engaged in "vaccine nationalism," pushing some underdeveloped countries and regions into a desperate situation of having no vaccines to administer.

Since March 2021, the United States has thrown away at least 15 million doses of COVID-19 vaccine, significantly more than many poor countries have prepared for their whole populations, according to NBC News on Sept 1, 2021.

"It's really tragic that we have a situation where vaccines are being wasted while lots of African countries have not had even 5 percent of their populations vaccinated," said Sharifah Sekalala, an associate professor of global health law at England's University of Warwick.

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa also slammed rich countries over their hoarding of vaccines, adding that "they are just giving us the crumbs from their table. The greed they demonstrated was disappointing."

The Biden administration is still pursuing US interests in ways that are detrimental to the interests of the rest of the world, commented an article on the website of the US Foreign Policy magazine.