A man walks on a platform along the East River in New York, the United States, on Aug. 9, 2020. The total number of COVID-19 cases in the United States surpassed the 5 million mark on Sunday, according to the Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) at Johns Hopkins University. (Xinhua/Wang Ying)
POLITICIZATION OF PANDEMIC PREVENTION
The pandemic in the United States has provided not a platform for cooperation among politicians, but a battleground for them to grapple with each other.
As the COVID-19 cases surge across the United States, Republicans and Democrats increasingly view the disease in starkly different ways, according to a report published on June 25 by the Pew Research Center.
Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents are about twice as likely as Republicans and Republican leaners to say that masks should be worn always. Republicans are much more likely than Democrats to say that masks should rarely or never be worn, according to the report.
The wide split between different political factions has not only prevented U.S. citizens from acting in accordance with the preventive guidelines, but also hindered the whole country from forming a comprehensive anti-pandemic plan.
Instead of following scientists' and public health experts' advice and listening to the voice of the masses, some U.S. politicians chose to prioritize their own political interests.
Few Americans want to see their local schools reopen for in-person instruction as usual or even with minor adjustments considering the severe COVID-19 situation, said a new poll released on July 22.
Only 8 percent of Americans say their local K-12 schools should open for in-person instruction as usual and 14 percent think schools can reopen with minor adjustments, showed the survey conducted by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.
However, Trump and his administration are pressuring schools to reopen in the fall, threatening to withhold federal funding from schools that do not comply, because reopening schools is seen as a crucial step to restarting the country's economy for his reelection campaign.
Witnessing the government's inability and bigotry in tackling the coronavirus crisis, more than 1,200 U.S. scientists have signed an open letter, accusing the Trump administration of denigrating "scientific expertise."
They also warned that "the dismissal of scientific evidence in policy formulation has affected wide areas of the social, biological, environmental and physical sciences."
"In a perfect world, this unprecedented pandemic would have been an occasion for Americans to put aside their differences and rally around the flag ... But overall, the pandemic has served to deepen polarization, and that is likely to get worse as time goes on," Francis Fukuyama, a famed political scientist, wrote in a recent article titled "The Wages of American Political Decay."
