The United States has "failed spectacularly" in containing the spread of COVID-19 due to its inactive and fragmented anti-epidemic response, The Washington Post said in an article published Monday.

The COVID-19 pandemic "exposes the flaws and fissures in a nation long proud of its ability to meet cataclysmic challenges," read the article, titled "The crisis that shocked the world: America's response to the coronavirus."

"America, experts say, is approaching a tipping point at which its public health systems could become so overwhelmed they begin to collapse," it said.

Unlike many other countries which have successfully kept their epidemic situation under control, the United States has put itself into a "dismal situation" of surging infections and deaths, the article said.

"The fumbling of the virus was not a fluke: The American coronavirus fiasco has exposed the country's incoherent leadership, self-defeating political polarization, a lack of investment in public health, and persistent socioeconomic and racial inequities that have left millions of people vulnerable to disease and death," it said.

The country is "not really trying" to respond, the article quoted Beth Cameron, former senior director for global health security and biodefense on the White House National Security Council, as saying.

Apart from its "single biggest miscalculation" of rushing to reopen the economy, the U.S. government has also made efforts to downplay the threat of the virus, undermine scientific expertise, and "divide and confuse" the public, it said.

"The rejection of scientific expertise has flowered into a conspiracy theory holding that the experts are lying as part of a political agenda," it added.