The China Society for Human Rights Studies on Thursday released an article titled "The COVID-19 Pandemic Magnifies the Crisis of 'U.S.-Style Human Rights'."
Please see the attachment for the article.
The COVID-19 Pandemic Magnifies the Crisis of "U.S.-Style Human Rights"
The China Society for Human Rights Studies (CSHRS)
(June 2020)
The sudden and unexpected outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic is the most serious global public health emergency that humanity has experienced since the end of World War II. It is also a "big test of human rights conditions" for all countries across the globe. The virus does not respect borders, nor is race or nationality relevant in the face of the disease. Given this, to honor our common commitment to human rights, governments of different countries are obliged to adopt scientific measures for the prevention and control of the virus and do their best to ensure the health and safety of their people. Nevertheless, the U.S. government's self-interested, short-sighted, inefficient, and irresponsible response to the pandemic has not only caused the tragedy in which about 2 million Americans became infected with the virus and more than 110,000 have died from it, but also caused the exposure and deterioration of the long-existing problems within the United States, such as a divisive society, the polarization between the rich and the poor, racial discrimination, and the inadequate protection of the rights and interests of vulnerable groups. This has led the American people into grave human rights disasters.
1. The U.S. Government's Ineffective Response to the Pandemic Leading to Human Rights Disasters
Being distracted, slack, and opinionated in the face of the pandemic, the United States Federal Government declared a national emergency on March 13, after tens of thousands of deaths had occurred. The pandemic statistics released by Johns Hopkins University in the United States showed that as of June 9 Eastern Standard Time (EST), there had been 1,971,302 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and 111,620 deaths from the virus in the United States, with both figures significantly higher than those of other countries. For the United States, which boasts the strongest economic and technological strength and the most abundant medical resources in the world, this is a sad irony.
Ignoring the Pandemic Warnings.According to the revisited timeline of the pandemic in the United States, which was released by The New York Times and Washington Post in April 2020, the U.S. government had repeatedly ignored the pandemic warnings and slacked off on pandemic control. In early January, the National Security Council (NSC) received intelligence reports predicting the spread of the virus in the United States. On January 29, Peter Navarro, Director of the Office of Trade and Manufacturing Policy at the White House, laid out in striking detail the potential risks of a coronavirus pandemic: as many as half a million deaths and trillions of dollars in economic losses. U.S. health officials and medical experts, such as Secretary of the United States Department of Health and Human Services Alex Azar, also repeatedly warned of the deadly pandemic in the United States. Unfortunately, the U.S. government ignored these warnings. Instead, it focused on controlling the spreading of information, restricted medical experts' freedom to release information on the pandemic to the public, and even published false information to mislead the public, such as calling the virus "a flu", claiming that the virus has low infection and fatality rates, and saying that "One day it's like a miracle, it will disappear." Under such circumstances, the "golden window" period for infectious disease prevention and control was wasted. Even then, many members of the U.S. Senate, including Richard Burr, who was the chairman of the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee, were involved in insider trading scandals. They used their positions to understand the serious situation of the pandemic earlier, but they downplayed the risk of the pandemic in front of the public while selling a large number of stocks before the pandemic triggered a stock market crash. In this way, they had a "perfect hedge".
Prioritizing Capital Interests.The website of The New York Times reported on April 13, 2020, that the White House COVID-19 Response Working Group and the NSC jointly prepared a memo dated February 14, which was titled "U.S. Government Response to the 2019 Novel Coronavirus." According to the report, the memo documented drastic pandemic-control measures including: "significantly limiting public gatherings and cancellation of almost all sporting events, performances, and public and private meetings that cannot be convened by phone. Consider school closures." Nevertheless, the decision-makers immediately rejected the memo after hearing that the measures would lead to the collapse of the U.S. stock market. This showed how the U.S. government prioritized capital interests and the response of the capital market, rather than making the people's right to life and health a priority. Due to this, the U.S. government failed to give effective warnings to the public and failed to get prepared for the potential consumption of medical resources caused by the pandemic, bringing the American people to the brink of infection and death.
Politicizing the Anti-pandemic Endeavor.When the virus broke out in the United States, some U.S. politicians used it as a weapon to attack political opponents and seek election benefits instead of regarding the drive to protect the lives and health of their people as their top priority. The website of The Lancet, an authoritative medical journal, published an editorial on May 16, which was a rare case for the journal. The editorial explicitly pointed out the intervention of political parties in the public health sector of the United States, and the weakening role of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). It criticized the U.S. government for not actively adopting basic medical and anti-pandemic measures such as detection, tracking, and isolation, placing its hopes on "magic bullets" such as vaccines and new drugs, and hoping that the virus would eventually "magically disappear". On May 4, the famous U.S. political scientist Francis Fukuyama published the article The Wages of American Political Decay on the website The National Interest, pointing out that the highly polarized party politics made the political checks and balances an insurmountable obstacle to decision-making; that the pandemic, which should have been an opportunity to put aside differences and show unity, further deepened the political polarization. Politicians viewed the pandemic as an opportunity to seize power and partisan interests, and this came at the cost of the lives of countless American people.
Leading to Catastrophic Consequences.The website of The New York Times reported on May 20, 2020, that research by Columbia University of the United States showed that delays in adopting movement restrictions had caused at least 36,000 people to die. According to the research, if the U.S. government had adopted movement restrictions one week earlier, it could have saved 36,000 lives, and if the U.S. government had adopted movement restrictions two weeks earlier, 83 percent of the deaths from COVID-19 could have been avoided. On May 24,The New York Timesunprecedentedly dedicated its entire front page to 1,000 U.S. COVID-19 victims. Their names, ages, and brief descriptions were listed under the headline "U.S. Deaths Near 100,000, an Incalculable Loss," with a subheadline reading: "They Were Not Simply Names on a List. They Were Us." The website of the Time reported on May 20 that the delayed social-distancing measures caused 90 percent of the deaths from COVID-19 in the United States, and observed that such a huge loss of life was essentially a failure of U.S. democracy.
2. Inequality within U.S. Society Being Fully Exposed during the Pandemic
In the United States, both liberal and conservative scholars agree on one basic fact that there is stark inequality within U.S. society. The deep-seated institutional reason for such inequality is that the U.S. government and political parties have long been manipulated by interest groups, and are unable to formulate and implement tax, industrial, and social security policies that promote social equality. During the pandemic, the social and economic inequality within U.S. society has been exposed and exacerbated.
The Elite Class of the United States Being Specially Treated in Coronavirus Testing.Viral infection does not distinguish between rich and poor, but the limited testing and medical resources were not fairly allocated in the United States. The website of The New York Times reported on March 19, 2020, that many dignitaries in the United States somehow underwent virus testing when they had no signs of infection and when nearly every state in the country lacked testing equipment. Uche Blackstock, an emergency medicine physician, said frustratedly, "As a physician, I find it upsetting that celebrities and government officials without symptoms have been able to access testing quickly with same-day results, while I've had to ration out testing to my patients with turnaround times of five or seven days." This obvious injustice has made the public increasingly raise questions. When medical staff and many patients cannot be diagnosed, whether the privileged class obtains priority testing means that the ordinary people are deprived of testing opportunities. The website of The Guardian, a British newspaper, published an article on March 21 and commented that when the Titanic hit the iceberg and sank, women and children were protected and rescued first, but in the face of COVID-19, the United States has first rescued the rich and powerful groups. The gap between rich and poor in getting the virus tests in the United States has exposed the slackness, confusion, and injustice in its pandemic prevention and control system.
People at the Bottom of U.S. Society Facing an Increasingly Dangerous Situation.The pandemic has made the lives of people at the bottom of U.S. society increasingly difficult, and further intensified the social polarization between rich and poor. According to a CBS report in 2019, nearly 40 percent of Americans would struggle to cover a $400 emergency expense, and 25 percent of Americans skipped necessary medical care because they could not afford the cost. The website of The Atlantic reported in April 2020 that low-income people in the United States would usually delay seeing a doctor when they became ill, not because they did not want to recover, but because they had no money at all. Faced with the COVID-19 pandemic, tens of millions of people in the United States are not covered by medical insurance, when intensive care for COVID-19 costs as high as tens of thousands of dollars in the country. "To be or not to be" is not just a philosophical proposition of some literary work, but a realistic choice that the people at the bottom of U.S. society have to make. Russia Today reported on April 30 that a Gallup survey revealed that one in seven American adults said that if they or their family members developed symptoms related to COVID-19, they would probably give up medical treatment because they were worried that they could not afford the costs. The United Nations Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, Philip Alston, pointed out on April 16 that the poor in the United States were "being hit hardest by the COVID-19 pandemic". He observed, "Low-income and poor people face far higher risks from the coronavirus due to chronic neglect and discrimination, and a muddled, corporate-driven federal response has failed them."
High Unemployment Rates Leading the Working Class into a Crisis of Survival.According to data released by the U.S. Department of Labor on May 28, 2020, the cumulative number of Americans applying for unemployment relief from March 15 to May 23 has for the first time reached 40.8 million. Given the high unemployment rate brought about by the pandemic and the long-existing structural discrimination and polarization between rich and poor, the U.S. working class's ability to resist risks has greatly diminished. Vox News reported on April 10 that from the catering industry and tourism to the media industry, the entire U.S. economy has felt the impact of the pandemic, and just like the impact of other crises, the most vulnerable groups bore the brunt of the economic impact. According to the report, during the pandemic, the people who are most vulnerable amid layoffs are those who earn the lowest salaries, such as low-wage workers in the catering and retail industries. According to the report released by the National Restaurant Association on April 20, two-thirds of restaurant workers (about 8 million people) have been dismissed or put on vacation due to the pandemic. When the U.S. government launched the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), which was intended to help small- and medium-sized enterprises, some large companies with sufficient funds took advantage of the rule loopholes to acquire huge loans, but small businesses and small shops that urgently needed loans to sustain themselves could not get the help. The above-mentioned report also showed that at least 60 percent of employers said that the existing relief plan of the federal government could not help them reduce layoffs. All this has revealed that the U.S. working class was the first to feel the pain of the economic recession brought about by the pandemic, and became the victims of the U.S. government's inefficient anti-pandemic measures.
