Can Biden save the US from COVID- 19?
On the first day when Joe Biden sits behind the Resolute desk, what would be waiting for the 46th president of the US would probably be tons of documents and classified files describing how huge the coronavirus disaster this country has been facing over the year, exactly one year since the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ( CDC) sounded the alarm about the outbreak.
As a large amount of video footages and pictures show hospitals overwhelmed by growing new daily cases across the US, frontline health workers had cried over the shortage of protective supplies, and are now protesting about the chaos in vaccine distribution. Biden has to face a very tough road ahead, not only because the US – the world’s leader with an advanced healthcare system – saw the coronavirus death surpass 400,000, a new high, but also because the unmitigated public health crisis revealed deep- rooted problems of US governance.
While Biden led the first national mourning for coronavirus victims the night before the inauguration and the bell of the Washington National Cathedral tolled 400 times to mourn the 400,000 plus lives lost to the epidemic, he was also inheriting a huge mess despite pinning his hopes on the inoculation of vaccines. Ahead of the inauguration, Biden emphasized that the past year tested Americans in unimaginable ways, and that it’s time for healing and overcoming this crisis together.
But how? Many Chinese and foreign experts have raised this question while bringing up a number of issues that the new administration needs to focus on in lifting the US out of its darkest moment, and to consider some of the antiepidemic experiences proven to be successful in China to contain the viral spread.
The US missed all the golden opportunities at the early stage, which dates back to early January 2020, when the US sensed the danger of the virus that had led to the outbreak in Wuhan and evacuated its citizens from the Chinese city. Yet, it failed to take swift actions back home to prevent the virus from spreading at its home soil, said Zeng Guang, chief epidemiologist of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention.
“There are two major problems in the US fight against the COVID- 19 outbreak. One is the lack of testing and the other is a shortage of personal protection equipment ( PPE),” Chen Xi, an assistant professor of public health at Yale University, told the Global Times on Wednesday.
From the time of the first reported case to mid- May, it took hundreds of days for the US to catch up with the testing capacity of South Korea, though the two countries reported their first cases about the same time, the expert said, noting that the yearlong trade war the US launched against China had also weighed on the supply of PPE, including facial masks, in the US. However, rising anti- intellectualism, also shocked the world.
“The US has almost never done a single right thing during its virus ‘ battle,’ if it qualifies as a battle,” said Shen Yi, a professor at the School of International Relations and Public Affairs of Fudan University. It’s simple to understand states run by Democrats are not doing any better, Shen said, noting that the pandemic has exposed what he would called a “crisis of capitalism in the noneconomic arena.”
Will Biden save the US?
While fighting the COVID- 19 will top Biden’s agenda, some Chinese experts who have closely observed the US response to the outbreak doubt whether a change in leadership could really save America from the pandemic, when many considered accelerated mass vaccination might work out, while others questioned if the new president could come up with plans implemented systematically and scientifically.
More importantly, it still remains a question whether the new leader could take the matter from objective and scientific perspectives after a year of politicization and polarization of the epidemic under the Trump administration.
“Unlike China, which already accumulated abundant experience from SARS and other epidemic, the US has to start from the scratch. And the worse of all, the country was blindfolded by its political prejudice and refuses to learn China’s experience,” Zeng said.