Science betrayed in US scapegoating

Efforts by the United States to find a scapegoat for its failure to put COVID-19 under effective control domestically are utterly unjust and immoral, said experts.

On Monday, the total number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in the US exceeded 35 million, with deaths exceeding 610,000－both the highest in the world, according to Johns Hopkins University data.

The country has seen a sharp rebound of the disease recently. US registered over 100,000 daily cases on Friday, the most for a single day since early February, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

A rebound of the pandemic in the US has been seriously affecting its economy, putting additional stress on its employment and social security.

About 400,000 people in the country filed initial claims for unemployment benefits for the week ended July 24, according to figures from the US Labor Department.

The COVID-19 pandemic has disproportionately affected people of color in the US, reported news magazine Newsweek on Saturday, citing a new poll.

The survey, conducted by US market analytics company The Harris Poll, revealed that nearly one in four Latina women in the US have reported losing a family member to the coronavirus.

As it fails to fight the pandemic effectively, the US has been taking irresponsible measures by exporting the virus, through its repatriation of illegal immigrants, which has exacerbated the pandemic globally, according to some media reports.

Facing a serious rebound of the pandemic domestically, the US continues to try to shift its responsibilities in failing to cope with the pandemic to other countries such as China, rather than focusing on fighting the pandemic.

However, in terms of origin tracing of the coronavirus, more research has pointed to the fact that the virus may have been circulating in the US before the epidemic broke out in China.

Earlier evidence

A study published last month by the US National Institutes of Health confirmed that SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes COVID-19, was quietly circulating in the country before the US' first reported COVID-19 case in January in 2020.

Michael Melham, mayor of Belleville township in New Jersey, told North Jersey news site in April last year that he had tested positive for coronavirus antibodies.

He believed he contracted the virus in November 2019, more than a month before the first cases were reported in China.

US intelligence agencies alerted Israel and NATO to the coronavirus outbreak in China in November 2019, before the first cases were identified in China, according to a report by The Times of Israel in April last year.

ABC News also reported that US intelligence officials were warning about the coronavirus in a report prepared in November by the military's National Center for Medical Intelligence.

The report of the intelligence shared by the US supports the controversial proposal that the novel coronavirus was brought by the US troops to Wuhan, Hubei province, in China in October 2019, during the Military World Games, according to a report by Russia's RT.

Hong Yuan, a researcher in US studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said the US did not pay adequate attention to COVID-19, which resulted in a pandemic. Moreover, it has tried to shift its responsibilities by stigmatizing China, which is a total betrayal of science, justice and conscience.

"The US, Israel and NATO should have worked together to prevent the novel coronavirus from evolving into a global pandemic," he said. "Due to the pandemic, poorer countries have suffered the worst."

In addition, the US is colluding with some other countries to blame China for the cause of the pandemic, which is totally immoral, Hong said.

Pavel Feldman, deputy director of the Institute for Strategic Studies and Forecasts of the Peoples' Friendship University of Russia, said the blame against China is aimed at advancing US geopolitical goals.

"There is a clear large-scale campaign against China. These accusations have become part of a large political game in the international arena where the West sees China as a challenge," Feldman said.

Xinhua contributed to this story.