III. The Mismanaged Response of the US to the Covid-19 Pandemic

The slow and ineffective US response during the early stages of the outbreak set an appalling example to the international community and made the US performance in handling the pandemic the worst of all countries. Instead of facing this issue squarely and reflecting on its shortcomings, the US government has tried to shift the blame and divert people's attention by shamelessly politicizing SARS-CoV-2 origins tracing. It has severely undermined joint international efforts in the fight against the pandemic and become a weak link in global public health governance. Despite domestic criticisms of its inaction or meddling, the US government has refused to examine its poor performance; rather, it has doubled down on its attempt to evade responsibility. This will inevitably do further damage to its capacity to deal with future public health crises.

At the end of 2024, when cases of human infection with highly pathogenic avian influenza emerged in the US, it did not share the information with the international community. It then cut off reporting channels to the WHO and stopped updates on its Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) website at the beginning of 2025. This shows that it was in fact the United States that covered up the truth of the epidemic.

1. Failure to Provide a Timely and Effective Response to Covid-19

In January 2020, the US was aware that an epidemic of a novel coronavirus was spreading quickly within its borders. Choosing to downplay the severity of the epidemic, the US government on multiple occasions compared Covid-19 to the flu, saying that it would disappear automatically one day. It also accused the WHO of overestimating its fatality rate, and advocated the use of hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin as "wonder drugs" without solid scientific evidence. This led to drug abuse and delayed the proper treatment of patients.

The US government also systematically deprived its citizens of the right to be informed of updated pandemic information. From March 3, 2020, the US CDC stopped releasing key data on Covid-19, including test results tallies, on the grounds that its information might not be "accurate". Over the next three years or so, people in the US could only access information about the epidemic from estimated data collected and reported by non-governmental institutions such as the Johns Hopkins University.

By mid-April 2020, the number of confirmed Covid-19 cases in the US had exceeded 660,000. However, with an eye on the upcoming presidential election, the incumbent administration announced that the pandemic had "passed the peak", rushed to roll out plans to reopen the economy, and swore to quickly bring life back to normal. To this end, some politicians refused to wear masks in public – they were among the first to defy pandemic control protocols – and undermined sensible precautions, such as mask wearing and social distancing, by portraying them as matters of individual choice. This further desynchronized the pandemic prevention and control efforts of the US.

Addressing the malfunctioning US government response in the early stages of the pandemic, one American economist commented that from the moment the pandemic was first identified, the US president and his team had downplayed the crisis and ignored basic and widely known public health guidelines. He urged the US government to examine the available data, identify the failures, and call out its relentless misinformation.

Covid-19 overwhelmed the costly and profit-driven US medical system, and vulnerable groups such as the impoverished, ethnic minorities, and senior citizens were the first to be abandoned in treatment. According to an Associated Press report in June 2020, of every 10 deaths in the US, eight were people over 65 years old. The American people's rights to life and health were in no way being guaranteed on an equal basis.

Data from the US National Center for Health Statistics shows that average life expectancy in the country fell from 78.8 in 2019 to 77 in 2020, and further declined to 76.1 in 2021, a decrease of 2.7 years from 2019. Despite an increase to 78.4 in 2023, average life expectancy in the US still remained far below that of most developed countries (82 years), and also lower than that of China. America's ill handling of the pandemic has caused enduring pain to American families and society, ultimately damaging the immediate interests and health of its own residents.

The US president thwarted the pandemic prevention and control efforts of professional agencies, local governments, and the public in the belief that this would secure gains in the presidential election. Ultimately, they failed in both the pandemic response and the election. Its errors in its early epidemic response were addressed in an article from a US media outlet, "One country stands alone, as the only affluent nation to have suffered a severe, sustained outbreak for more than four months: the United States."

After the Democratic Party came to power, the US government adjusted its pandemic response policies; however, a political pandemic of "partisanship over life" was spreading. Some politicians from the defeated Republican party began to encourage and spread vaccine conspiracy theories, inciting resistance to and skepticism about vaccines among the public. Their manipulation of public sentiment severely weakened the country's pandemic prevention and control.

In June 2022 when the Omicron variant reached its infection peak, only 67.2 percent of the US population were fully vaccinated with two doses, ranking last among the G7 countries and 59th globally.

There were also numerous local administrative and judicial actions that undermined pandemic containment efforts. Insisting that citizens should be "free to choose", the state administration of Florida demanded schools across the state to reopen, leading to widespread infection among teachers and students. In April 2022, a federal judge in Florida ruled that the CDC's prolonged mask mandate for public transportation was "unlawful". This rampant political virus saw the US become the worst-performing country in the fight against the pandemic.

CDC data released in May 2023 revealed that deaths caused by Covid-19 in the US totaled 1.13 million, accounting for 16.4 percent of concurrent global deaths reported by the WHO. By March 2025, at least 1.22 million Americans had died of the virus. These figures were out of alignment with the overall population size, economic strength, and level of medical technology of the US, and were indicative of its ineffective and unscientific response policies. According to a public opinion poll conducted by Axios, over 50 percent of Americans believed that public health officials lied about the effect of vaccines and masks in preventing the spread of the virus and that the government did not make the health and wellbeing of citizens a priority.

The US not only botched its own response to Covid-19; it also obstructed and sabotaged international cooperation in various ways. The deliberate concealment of information by the US government misled other countries and the WHO in the research and analysis of Covid-19 trend.

In March 2021, the US government publicly announced that it would take an "America First" approach in vaccine supply and vaccination, promising only surplus stocks for other countries. Its massive procurement and stockpiling of vaccines resulted in enormous waste.

According to US CDC data, from December 2020 through May 2022, more than 82.1 million doses of Covid-19 vaccines, or 11 percent of the total distributed by the federal government, were discarded in the US. Tolerating reckless waste at home, the US kept hoarding excess vaccines and agitated vaccine nationalism. Its empty promises of vaccine supply to the international community were followed by a smear campaign to discredit China's vaccines.

The excessive vaccine stockpile and waste in the US benefited no one, and its approach came under criticism domestically. A business leader in the US said in an interview in December 2020, "the extreme idea that everybody should die until we have the very last American vaccinated, that's hardly the appropriate response." In May 2021, a US think tank released a reality check on the pandemic, criticizing the US for its hesitancy to assist other countries in fighting the pandemic, which would lead to the US "being seen as selfishly isolationist in a time of immense need".

The delayed and inadequate response of the US to the pandemic was not a failure by chance. One of the causes was a steady reduction of budget and staff in US public health agencies long before the outbreak. According to national associations of health officials of the US, from 2008 to the pandemic outbreak, almost 60,000 employees of local public health agencies in the US, about a quarter of their workforce, were laid off, and the budget of the CDC for these agencies was cut by 30 percent compared to 2003.

2. Shifting Blame for the Ineffective US Pandemic Response

The US has made China the primary scapegoat for its own mismanaged Covid-19 response. The US government's indifference and delayed actions wasted the precious time China had secured for the global fight against the pandemic. To avoid culpability for its own failures, the anti-China bloc in Congress has led the charge in deflecting blame by repeatedly introducing legislative proposals that accuse China of hindering the US pandemic response.

On March 16, 2020, the US government finally issued the long-overdue guidelines on travel restrictions and social quarantine, and for the first time admitted that the country could face an economic recession as a result of the pandemic. The following day, it coined and began to use the term "Chinese virus" in an explicit attempt to redirect public discontent at home. On March 24, during a G7 foreign ministers' virtual teleconference, the US secretary of state pressured his counterparts to adopt the term "Wuhan virus" when referring to SARS-CoV-2. This request was rejected by other member states, and the conference ended without a joint statement.

In September 2020, the US delegation tabled its stigmatizing "Chinese virus" statement at the United Nations General Assembly, prompting criticism from UN Secretary-General António Guterres. Reflecting the collective concerns of member states, he warned that populism and racism in response to the pandemic would only exacerbate the crisis.

These scapegoating tactics of the US government triggered a wave of hate crimes against Asian Americans. In response, the House of Representatives passed a resolution, condemning terms such as "Chinese virus", "Wuhan virus", and "Kung flu" as fuel for racism.

In 2021, the US government directed its intelligence agencies to launch a 90-day investigation into the origins of SARS-CoV-2. At the end of August, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) released an unclassified summary of its intelligence assessment. While the report was rife with unfounded allegations against China, it had to concede that there was insufficient evidence to support the "Wuhan lab leak" hypothesis.

The US allegations are entirely baseless; even its own institutions and authoritative experts have repeatedly debunked the misconception that the virus originated in China. But their findings and evidence have been deliberately suppressed and concealed by the US government. Between 2020 and 2023, three US entities – the Los Alamos National Laboratory (under the Department of Energy), the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and the ODNI – independently concluded in separate reports that the Wuhan Institute of Virology had maintained strict biosecurity protocols, and ruled out the possibility that the lab had engineered the novel coronavirus. However, not a single one of these findings has been accepted by the US government. Instead, they have been selectively ignored and concealed.

The Covid-19 pandemic is the common enemy of all humanity. It requires all nations to join forces in response and support each other. On February 8, 2020, as other countries actively supported China during its initial epidemic outbreak, the US State Department also announced US$ 100 million in assistance. However, to date, that pledge has not been honored.

In contrast, despite the US failure to keep its promise, China still extended substantial aid when the US was in need. On April 1, 2020, National Public Radio aired a recording of the US president himself, admitting that China was providing the US with 80 tonnes of medical supplies, including 1.8 million masks, 10.3 million pairs of gloves, and millions of other items.

According to a report by a US media outlet on January 29, 2021, China provided medical supplies valued at US$12 million in March and April 2020. Notably, Zhejiang Province alone sent 11 million masks to 12 US states, including Indiana, with which it has forged a friendship for over 30 years.

However, some US politicians showed no appreciation for China's magnanimity and generosity. Since they could not conceal China's aid to the world – including their own country – they smeared it as "mask diplomacy" aimed at influencing the international community. The US was unwilling to assume its responsibility to help other countries, yet it was opposed to China stepping up with such initiatives. Its approach was neither serious nor dignified.

The US has made the WHO another target of blame.

On January 29, 2020, following his visit to China, WHO director-general commended China's efforts and transparency at a press conference in Geneva. At that time, the WHO had continuously issued alerts to the international community – including the US – to the threat of a larger-scale pandemic.

On April 10, 2020, the US government, which had previously downplayed WHO warnings, accused some American media, WHO officials, and opposition politicians of failing in their duties on pandemic response. On April 14, the US announced a temporary suspension of funding to the WHO, citing the organization's alleged failure to fulfill its obligations.

On May 20, the US declared that it had sent a letter to the WHO, demanding the organization to make "major substantive improvements" and demonstrate "independence from China" within 30 days; otherwise, it would permanently freeze funding and reconsider its membership in the organization.

Just nine days later, the US announced that it would withdraw from the WHO because of the organization's failure to adopt these "urgently needed" reforms.

The editor-in-chief of the authoritative medical journal The Lancet condemned the unscrupulous US action of blaming and defunding the WHO as an "appalling betrayal of global solidarity" and called for every scientist, every health worker, and every citizen to resist and rebel against this betrayal.

In 2021, the US government reversed the decision to withdraw from the WHO and pledged to resume its obligations. However, on January 20, 2025, the new administration made the farcical announcement that it would once again withdraw, citing the organization's mishandling of the pandemic and its inability to demonstrate independence from China's influence.

American public health experts and institutions were also made scapegoats for some politicians.

In April 2020, Anthony Fauci, an eminent infectious disease expert and member of the White House Coronavirus Task Force, revealed during a CNN interview that the White House had repeatedly rejected pandemic prevention proposals such as social distancing. The US government immediately denied his statement, sparking calls to "fire Fauci" among its Republican supporters.

Even after the 2020 presidential election, some politicians persisted in attacking public health experts and institutions. They trumpeted accusations in Congress and the right-wing media, alleging that the NIH had funded China's gain-of-function research on the virus. A number of US experts and scholars suffered from political attacks and suppression. Their regular research funding was suspended, and they were subjected to intense questioning at hearings. A Fox News host denounced Fauci publicly on the basis that "the guy in charge of America's response to Covid turns out to be the guy who funded the creation of Covid", while a former White House trade adviser labeled Fauci "the father of the actual virus" who had allowed China to "engineer a virus".

3. The Politically Motivated Missouri Lawsuit

Since the first half of 2020, some organizations and individuals in the US, including the Missouri and Mississippi state governments, have initiated groundless lawsuits against China, holding China accountable and seeking damages for losses resulting from the pandemic. They have made spurious allegations – that SARS-CoV-2 originated from a lab leak in the Wuhan virology institute, that China concealed pandemic information from the world, and that China hoarded medical supplies.

On March 7, 2025, local time, the US District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri ruled that China must pay Missouri US$24.49 billion in compensation for Covid-related losses, plus accrued interest. This kind of vexatious litigation, orchestrated by state governments, is a politically motivated farce that violates basic legal principles. China rejects such proceedings and will never accept a judgment delivered in absentia. Disregarding basic facts and violating fundamental legal norms is an affront to the sovereignty and dignity of all nations and to the international rule of law.

According to the principle of sovereign equality enshrined in international law, the policies and measures adopted by the Chinese government for epidemic prevention and control constitute sovereign acts of state which are immune from the jurisdiction of US domestic courts. The Missouri judgment violates this foundational principle.

The allegations in the Missouri judgment – that China concealed pandemic information from the world and hoarded medical supplies – are completely unfounded. They are based on fabricated evidence provided by the state government of Missouri that has no legal validity. Even under US law, the judgment violates legal, regulatory, and judicial norms concerning the admissibility of evidence, the burden of proof, and the requirement to demonstrate causation.

At the early stage of the pandemic, China provided clear and timely information to the international community. It adopted an open and transparent approach by immediately releasing relevant information to the world, and it honored its responsibilities as a major country by providing assistance to nations throughout the world – including the US – with no strings attached. China was the world's major provider of anti-pandemic supplies.

In contrast, the Missouri state government's incompetent response to the pandemic resulted in its Covid-19 mortality rate ranking among the highest in the US. Now, the state government is trying to shift the blame for its failure, which is both irresponsible and unethical. China will never accede to demands for compensation founded on baseless allegations. China made a significant contribution to the global fight against the pandemic, and deserves recognition and fair treatment, not baseless blame, much less demands for compensation. The Chinese government does not recognize or accept this absurd court judgment and will take resolute countermeasures in defense of its legitimate rights.

4. Evidence Pointing to the US as the Origin of Covid-19

Numerous studies have shown that SARS-CoV-2 originated outside China. Research and analysis conducted by the US CDC and NIH indicate that prior to the outbreak in Wuhan, multiple regions in the US recorded positive SARS-CoV-2 test results and other evidence of the virus.

From May to October 2019, Virginia reported 19 respiratory disease outbreaks, a significant increase from the 13 and 15 outbreaks recorded during the same period in the previous two years. Laboratory tests were unable to identify the causes of some cases. In July 2019, two communities in northern Virginia reported outbreaks of pneumonia with unknown causes, which local media suspected to be "a mystery virus". A total of 54 people exhibited symptoms such as fever, coughing, and feableness, resulting in two deaths. That same month, the Fort Detrick Biological Laboratory, located just one hour's drive from the affected area, was suddenly shut down.

In 2019, a number of US states reported mysterious "e-cigarette or vaping product use-associated lung injury" cases. The symptoms were highly similar to those of Covid-19, including coughing, shortness of breath, and fatigue, with some resulting in severe lung damage. Illinois and Wisconsin reported their first cases in March 2019, and the number of cases peaked in August and September. This surge led to a total of 2,807 hospitalizations, including 68 deaths, across the US. The first death was recorded on August 23, 2019.

According to data from the US CDC, sporadic cases of "flu" began to appear in South Carolina as early as September 2019. Beginning in November, a widespread "flu" outbreak was recorded over a six week period in the area. Data from the South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control revealed that in the first week of December 2019, hospitalizations related to "flu" had increased by 41 percent year-on-year. When testifying in a House hearing related to Covid-19, then US CDC director admitted that some Covid-19 deaths had been misdiagnosed as flu in the US.

The US CDC data indicates that the first confirmed Covid-19 case in Florida was on March 1, 2020. However, according to the data on 171 Covid-19 patients published on the Florida Department of Health (DOH) website, the earliest confirmed cases were in January 2020. Most of these individuals reported no international travel history, suggesting that the virus was already circulating in local communities at the time. This crucial information about the timing of their diagnosis has since been deleted, and the then data chief at the Florida DOH was fired shortly after.

A US CDC study revealed that out of 7,389 serological survey samples collected from nine states between December 13, 2019 and January 17, 2020, 106 were SARS-CoV-2 antibody positive. This suggests that the virus existed in the US before the first official case was identified. Similarly, the NIH "All of Us" Research Program tested 24,079 blood samples collected from participants across 50 states between January 2 and March 18, 2020, identifying nine containing SARS-CoV-2 antibodies. The two earliest were collected in Illinois and Massachusetts on January 7 and 8, and seven out of the nine predate the first officially reported SARS-CoV-2 infections in Illinois, Massachusetts, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Mississippi. These findings show that SARS-CoV-2 was circulating across the US at a low level as early as December 2019, well before the first official cases were recorded.

A study by the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service under the US Department of Agriculture found that of 241 samples taken from white-tailed deer before January 2020, one tested positive for SARS-CoV-2. This indicates that the infection was already present in the deer population as far back as 2019.

From January 2015 to June 2020, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill reported 28 lab incidents involving genetically engineered microorganisms to the NIH. Six of these incidents involved various types of genetically modified coronavirus. Eight researchers might have been infected, yet only one was placed in quarantine. The university, NIH, and CDC all declined to disclose the incident reports to the public. An expert associated with The Lancet suggested that novel coronavirus might not have come from nature, and instead likely came from an incident that occurred in a US bio-technology lab.

Between 2006 and 2013, the US reported at least 1,500 serious laboratory incidents involving coronaviruses and other highly dangerous pathogens linked to diseases such as SARS, MERS, Ebola, anthrax, smallpox, and avian influenza. As recently as November 6, 2024, 43 lab monkeys escaped from a South Carolina research facility. There have been recurring laboratory incidents in the US, and the management of labs is a cause for concern. What were the real reasons for the shutdown of the Fort Detrick Biological Laboratory in late 2019? The US owes the world an explanation.

These questionable events all suggest that Covid-19 may have emerged in the US earlier than the US official timeline, and earlier than the outbreak in China. A thorough and in-depth investigation into the origins of the virus should be conducted in the US.

On April 18, 2025, the White House website published an article yet again misrepresenting China as the source of Covid-19. This once more demonstrates the obsessive US determination to politicize virus origins tracing. These attempts to manipulate public opinion will never succeed – the scientific community and the international community are increasingly immune to the incessant falsehoods of the US side.