Toll of the bell marks two administrations' failure: China Daily editorial

The largest bell of Washington National Cathedral tolled 900 times on the evening of Feb 7 in remembrance of the 900,000 people who had died of COVID-19 in the United States up to that point.

Randolph Hollerith, dean of the cathedral, said of the number, it's "a figure I cannot even comprehend". Yet the bell continues to toll, for it does so every time the number of deaths in the country due to COVID-19 rises by another 1,000.

On Saturday alone, the US saw 170,000 new COVID-19 infections and 2,807 new deaths, bringing the total number of deaths caused by the disease to more than 918,000.

When US President Joe Biden entered the White House in 2021, he overthrew almost all policies of his predecessor except for the ones attacking China. Indeed, he was quick to pick up the baton of blame to try and hammer China as being responsible for the pandemic, calling for the US national security agencies to pin the origin of the pandemic on a leak from a virology laboratory in China, a theory that had already been discredited. Although that effort naturally failed, the administration has continued to try and pass the buck to China for the US' own pandemic-response failings.

On Jan 27, the US Government Accountability Office issued its latest biennial "high risk" list of federal programs, which found, among others, the US Department of Health and Human Services' leadership and coordination of public health emergencies to be high risk.

As the report states, for more than a decade, the GAO has reported on the HHS's execution of its lead role in preparing for, and responding to, a range of public health emergencies and has found "persistent deficiencies in its ability to perform this role". These deficiencies have hindered the nation's response to the current COVID-19 pandemic and a variety of past threats, including other infectious diseases.

It found that while the HHS has taken some actions to address the 115 recommendations the GAO has made related to its leadership and coordination of public health emergencies since fiscal year 2007, 72 remain unaddressed.

Damningly, the report points out that the HHS has still not established clear roles and responsibilities and it fails to provide clear and consistent communication to key partners and the public.

By calling for the executive branch and Congress to pay sustained attention to address the problems it identified in order for HSS to be better able to fulfill its leadership and coordination role in any future public health emergencies, the GAO in effect was saying that they had been so busy blaming China that they had failed the US people — for whom the bell continues to toll.