The bungled American dream: US' record of failures in battling COVID-19

People wait to enter a COVID-19 test and vaccination site near Times Square in New York, the United States, Dec. 7, 2021. (Xinhua/Wang Ying)

Amid the raging spread of the Omicron variant that hit the US hard in recent months, 30-year-old Alex Zhang continued to try her best to get her hands on a rapid home test made available at local drug stores in Washington, D.C., though like many others with the same intention, she was completely out of luck.

"During the holidays I didn't find any test kits on nearby pharmacy shelves, while the lines for the testing site were hours long," said Zhang.

In response to an ongoing shortage of tests, the first batch of 1 billion "free" tests, as promised by the US federal government, was supposed to be made available to the public on January 19, but like Zhang, many Americans have yet to receive any such test kits.

Focusing on the US government's lousy pandemic management, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) issued a scathing report on January 22 that placed the US Department of Health & Human Services (HHS) on its "high risk" list, which is reserved for those government agencies in need of reform or otherwise vulnerable to fraud or mismanagement. The congressional watchdog also flagged HHS for several deficiencies that included failing to establish clear roles and responsibilities across its vast purview and providing clear communications to the public.

This is not the GAO's first time to castigate HHS for its misconducts. In fact, over the years, the GAO has made a total of 115 recommendations concerning HHS' leadership and operations in coping with public health emergencies, but to date, only 33 have been fully implemented.

Nearly 79 million COVID-19 cases have been reported across the US, while a total of 944,830 people have already lost their lives as of 15:30 p.m. February 25.

Failure and frustration

Nearly two years after the first coronavirus wave took hold in the US, Americans are increasingly critical of their government's response to COVID-19, ranging from elected officeholders to public health officials.

According to a survey conducted by the Pew Research Center in February, 49 percent of Americans reported that they believe the country's public health officials are doing only a fair or poor job responding to the pandemic. Positive ratings of public health officials have fallen 10 points since August and are well below the ratings reported during their initial response to the first outbreak in early 2020.

The survey also indicated that 60 percent of US adults are of the opinion that they felt confused as a result of changes to the health recommendations provided by public health officials, including how to best slow the spread of the coronavirus, with this proportion of the population having increased by 7 percentage points since last summer.

Echoing this survey, GAO noted that there was confusion among stakeholders and experts on the role of the Strategic National Stockpile in terms of the country's response to the pandemic, while HHS had yet to develop a formal process for "engaging with key stakeholders for pandemic preparedness."

Ever since the pandemic kicked off in the US, the public has expressed their frustration with how the country is functioning, and for many this dissatisfaction is leading to a desire for political, economic, and health care changes. According to a 2021 Pew Research poll, about three-quarters of Americans say that their political and health care systems need major changes or must be completely reformed.

The US government's crumbling credibility and inconsistent pandemic control policies have also led to a rising wave of anti-intellectualism and a public mistrust of medical and science professionals. According to a survey issued by Pew in February, Americans' confidence in public groups and institutions has turned downward compared with just a year ago. Trust in scientists and medical experts, once seemingly buoyed by their central role in addressing the coronavirus outbreak, is now below pre-pandemic levels.

Overall, 29 percent of US adults say they have a great deal of confidence in medical scientists to act in the best interests of the public, down from 40 percent who said this in November 2020. Similarly, the share with a great deal of confidence in scientists to act in the public's best interests is down by 10 percentage points.

According to experts, the US government's failures in controlling the pandemic has exposed long-simmering weaknesses in its social fabric and institutional designs.

"The Federal government and its local counterparts usually operate at their own wills, restricting each other and shirking their duties. Such ineffective cooperation mechanisms and the lack of effective implementation have led to US incompetence in dealing with public emergencies such as the COVID-19 pandemic," Gong Ting, an associate research fellow of the China Institute of International Studies, told the Guangming Daily.