"The American Emperor’s New Clothes"

According to the most recent edition of Bloomberg’s COVID Resilience Ranking, the United States jumped to the top of the list from the earlier 13th place, while China fell to the 8th. This action of deception has sparked outrage.

How did the United States, with over 35 million cumulative COVID-19 cases, come on top of the list? Bloomberg must have put in a lot of “hard work” in making up the reality. To emphasize the US’ “outstanding performance” in the recent fight against the coronavirus, Bloomberg has added a “reopening process” dimension, prominently featuring indicators such as “vaccinated population”, “lockdown severity”, “resumed flight capacity”, and “vaccinated travel routes”. As reported by Bloomberg, the US' top spot on the list demonstrates the benefits of its high vaccination rate: decrease in new cases, massive resumption of flights, and unlimited travel for vaccinated people. However, the critical figures such as “total number of confirmed cases” and “total number of deaths” have been omitted.

Bragging about certain indicators while downplaying overall predicament

As we all know, despite the fact that human lives were at stake, the US government consistently prioritized economic development and political struggle over the right to life - it is precisely because of the Trump administration’s disregard for human lives and pursuit of economic success that the US missed the best opportunity to contain the pandemic, resulting in over 35 million people getting infected and over 620,000 losing their lives. The US government can hardly do anything to remedy and repair this tragedy for its people in the short term. However, although the tragedy is still fresh in people’s mind, Bloomberg has already been bragging about the rapid reboot of the national economy by ignoring the overall situation. Such manipulation is disrespectful to the deceased and ignorant of history’s lessons. It will also be detrimental to future efforts to combat the pandemic. At a time when coronavirus is still not fully contained in the US and the daily case count remains high, bragging about "first mover" advantages in the economic reboot downplays the significant risk of the virus' resurgence and the continuous spread of mutated strains, and squanders an opportunity to promote science in the fight against the pandemic in the aftermath of Trump’s election defeat.

Additionally, according to the most recent data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there are significant racial disparities in COVID-19 vaccination rates in the United States, with African Americans, Latinos, and Asians having significantly lower vaccination rates than whites. For ethnic minorities, vaccination may be complicated by a lack of health insurance or an illegal immigration status.

Flaunting short-term achievements while avoiding long-term concerns

According to Bloomberg, there is a supposedly realistic basis for concocting this list of ranking. The US has also shown signs of reversing the depressing situation in the fight against the pandemic since the Biden administration took over, through a combination of travel restrictions and massive vaccine procurement and vaccination. The US made some progress in its efforts to create an immunization barrier, particularly when the vaccination rate exceeded 50%. As a result, US media were eager to begin mounting a campaign to dispel the perception of being “the worst hit”. However, since the pandemic has far-reaching effects on American society, how could complex issues like political strife and social violence and so forth arising from the shock of raging pandemic, economic depression, and social disruption be completely alleviated by a few months of contingency measures?

Judging from the current state of American society, with persistent political polarization, growing ethnic tensions, and rampant racial politics, the issues brought by the pandemic, which are bound to intensify and converge with social tensions, have been reflected in and will continue to be reflected in mass violence in states throughout the US.

In this process, the unresolved gun issue will in turn fuel group violence and communal hatred. As a result, the resistance of people of color and the gathering of “white supremacist” groups will be intensified under the prolonged gloom of the pandemic, which will ultimately erase America’s current “achievements” in combating COVID-19. This vicious circle, which is difficult to quantify, has been purposefully avoided in this list through Bloomberg's careful manipulation. This self-deceiving list is ultimately a “cover-up” for America’s crisis-ridden society.

Bragging about ostensible “bright spots” while concealing institutional weaknesses

Since the outbreak of COVID-19, US politicians have ignored the country’s overall situation in the fight against the pandemic. Instead, what they did was politicizing scientific issues and ideologizing the fight against the pandemic from the perspective of their respective interest groups and parties. Several non-Western countries, including China, have excelled in utilizing their national institutions, establishing consensus on the fight against the pandemic, and implementing public health measures, while the “democratic institutions” that the US and its Western allies have vaunted have been seriously questioned due to their ineffective fight against the pandemic. As a defender of Western institutions and values, Bloomberg is attempting to conceal the US’ deep institutional deficiencies by the temporary achievements at the expense of its own credibility by promoting the US as the “best place of COVID resilience in the globe” in order to obscure policy failures with the "bright spots".

Instead of solving its own problems, the US has made enemies of other countries. While the coronavirus was wreaking havoc in its land and endangering its citizens, the US went all-out to portray other countries, rather than coronavirus, as its primary adversary, slandering and shifting blame in order to maintain its hegemony. The US has repeatedly pointed its finger at China as the source of the virus without providing scientific evidence, and has purposefully minimized China’s efforts to combat the pandemic in an attempt to distort reality and confuse the public. The US accelerated vaccine research and development in an attempt to monopolize vaccine supplies, but then hoarded them and engaged in “vaccine nationalism”. The US now controls the supply of three vaccines - Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson, and Moderna - and has secured 800 million doses in total, leaving a surplus of more than 100 million doses even if all US citizens were vaccinated once. Meanwhile, only less than 26% of the world’s population has received at least one dose of the vaccine, and only 53 million doses have been administered to the African continent’s 1.3 billion people.

In the eyes of the global community, the ranking by Bloomberg is nothing more than a “new suit for the American emperor”. The enthusiasm of the American people who fought for freedom more than two centuries ago has faded away, and the Declaration of Independence, which states that “all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness” has been swallowed up. In a country corrupted by the arrogance of wealth hegemony, a group of profit-minded politicians have taken their turn in power, and in the face of such a formidable enemy as the coronavirus, they have no sense of caution or prudence, no concerns about lives, no modesty and rationality, no sense of responsibility. What’s more, playing political games has been the major focus among them. What does this bring to the American people, to the spirit of the nation, and to the future of America?

Bloomberg has always attempted to maintain an image of objectivity, neutrality, and rationality at a time when US hegemony was firmly established. However, just as the US has frequently suffered setbacks and made an exhibition of itself in recent time, Bloomberg has created this international farce of “the US is number one in the fight against the pandemic”. The international community’s mockery and contempt for it demonstrate that, in light of the gravity of the situation, all ideological manipulation driven by ulterior motives and deception is self-defeating. The Bloomberg COVID resilience ranking provides another opportunity for the international community to comprehensively expose the hypocrisy of US discourse hegemony and the paucity of American values.

Contributed by Cai Sulu, lecturer of School of Foreign Languages, South China University of Technology

Translated by Wu You