Botched U.S. COVID-19 policy poisons world

-- More than 1.35 million COVID-19 infections were reported nationwide on Monday, the highest national daily count worldwide

-- With world's largest COVID-19 caseload and highest death toll, the United States has deported hundreds of thousands of immigrants, many infected with the virus, to other countries, further spreading the pandemic far beyond its borders.

-- U.S. military bases overseas are contributing to the spread of COVID-19 within local populations.

BEIJING, Jan. 13 (Xinhua) -- While U.S. politicians are talking big about how the United States has got back "on the right track" out of the pandemic, a set of gruesome record-smashing numbers remind the Americans of a hard truth: they are far from seeing the light at the end of the tunnel.

According to the U.S. official data, more than 1.35 million COVID-19 infections were reported nationwide on Monday, the highest national daily count worldwide. On Wednesday, more than 151,000 patients were hospitalized, also the highest since the pandemic broke out in the country.

Despite all the idle boasts and self-deceiving excuses made by Washington, ordinary Americans are increasingly waking up to the cruel fact that they are paying the price for the botched U.S. COVID-19 policy.

As the world's most powerful country with its tentacles reaching into every nook and cranny of the globe, its crippling COVID-19 policy has also had a ripple effect, undermining global efforts to beat the pathogen.

Medical workers carry a patient to a hospital in New York, the United States, Dec. 13, 2021. (Xinhua/Wang Ying)

FALSE DAWN

As the U.S. infections and hospitalizations continue to shatter records, U.S. President Joe Biden on Tuesday defended the government's response to the pandemic, saying he was "confident we're on the right track" to tackle the pandemic.

While confidence is most prized in the face of daunting challenges like the pandemic, the numbers tell a less reassuring story.

According to data from Johns Hopkins and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, over the last week, the United States recorded an average daily tally of more than 761,000 cases. On Tuesday 47 states reported higher counts than a week earlier; 21 states set new dail records of cases in a week; 48 states reported more COVID-19 patients in hospital beds; and 41 states reported more COVID-19 patients in intensive-care units.

Besides, the numbers are very likely to be undercounted as patients who test positive with at-home test kits do not typically report to governmental agencies.

Along with hikes in cases and hospitalizations, the U.S. health system, which has already been short-staffed due to labor shortages and health-care workers put in quarantine after being infected, is being further strained.

As a desperate response to the pouring patients, many hospitals and long-term care facilities are even asking doctors and nurses who have tested positive to return to work.

Haitian migrants who are seeking asylum wait to get into a van to be transported from Del Rio, Texas, the United States, Sept. 24, 2021. (Photo by Nick Wagner/Xinhua)

Top U.S. infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci has said that with the Omicron variant, the disease will infect "just about everybody" regardless of vaccination status.

While U.S. politicians are still trying to gussy up their COVID-19 policy, people are seeing that behind the rosy picture those Washington elites presented nothing but another agonizing false dawn.

INTERNATIONAL SOURCE OF IMPORTED CASES

The collapsed U.S. response against the pandemic has not only put millions of Americans' health and life in peril, but also created a source of imported infections for other countries, undermining the very foundation of the global COVID-19 fight.

With world's largest COVID-19 caseload and highest death toll, the United States has deported hundreds of thousands of immigrants, many infected with the virus, to other countries, further spreading the pandemic far beyond its borders.

"From the beginning ... deportations have been a way to outsource our challenges to other nations," said U.S. Congresswoman Norma J. Torres last year. "Coronavirus changes that -- these deportations are exporting death."

Indeed, even now the United States is still the main source of infections for many countries, exporting virus through different ways.

People walk past a COVID-19 testing site in Times Square in New York, the United States, Jan. 9, 2022. (Photo by Michael Nagle/Xinhua)

The Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency announced Wednesday that about 70 South Korean nationals who attended the Consumer Electronics Show held in the U.S. city of Las Vegas last week tested positive for COVID-19.

In Japan, the U.S. lax approach to administering its military personnel with COVID-19 tests before and after arriving in the country has led to a spike in cases and cluster infections at multiple U.S. military bases there.

Japanese Foreign Minister Yoshimasa Hayashi has requested the U.S. bases in Japan to impose a curfew to prevent the virus from spreading at U.S. military facilities in Japan and further into the community.

All the cases risk dealing a blow to the COVID-19 control of other countries, which have been struggling to cope with the highly transmissible Omicron variant.

WIDESPREAD CRITICISM

For all these dire consequences that have already been induced, some U.S. politicians still refuse to admit any wrongdoing, claiming that they are "on the right track."

The botched U.S. COVID-19 policy has provoked widespread upset and angry from both within and outside its borders, with criticism pouring in to awaken those slumberous U.S. politicians.

Vehicles line up at a COVID-19 drive-through testing site in Los Angeles, California, the United States, Jan. 10, 2022. (Xinhua)

"The United States has not done well ... That's a problem and I think it needs to be said out loud that it's a problem because that's what a lot of people are experiencing every day," said Kathleen Sebelius, who once served as U.S. Health and Human Services secretary.

In a recent analysis, CNN said that the U.S. administration is coping with a failure "that could have been foreseen," and that the virus "that is more adaptable than the politicians who fight it" has outpaced them again.

Denny Tamaki, governor of Japan's Okinawa prefecture, criticized the U.S. military for lacking "management ability" after a U.S. military camp based on the island reported several hundreds of cases in late December.

In a telephone conversation last week with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Japanese foreign minister told Blinken that further measures need to be taken by the U.S. side to prevent the virus from further spreading.

U.S. military bases overseas are contributing to the spread of COVID-19 within local populations, said a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson recently, adding that the United States should reflect deeply on the negative impact that its actions have had on global anti-pandemic cooperation.