Pandemic letter from America: how the US handling of COVID-19 provides the starkest warning for us all

The World Health Organization (WHO) recently stated that more than 100,000 cases of COVID-19 are being reported daily across the Americas, which encompasses North, South and Central America. Out of all of the 100,000 infections being reported by several countries that more than half of them are coming from the United States.

This should make us vigilant. Epidemic prevention is more useful than imagined. Looking at the current situation in the United States, we should take a warning.

Confirmed coronavirus cases in the US hit 5 million on Sunday – a bleak milestone met with astonishment and alarm in Europe.

Perhaps nowhere outside the US is America’s bungled virus response viewed with more consternation than in Italy, which was ground zero of Europe's epidemic.

Italians were unprepared when the outbreak exploded in February, and the country still has one of the world’s highest official death tolls at 35,000.

After a strict nationwide, 10-week lockdown, vigilant tracing of new clusters and general acceptance of masks and social distancing, Italy has become a model of virus containment.

The difference of a thought determines the follow-up development, and the United States has tasted the consequences of their misjudgment.

This outbreak has revealed the weaknesses of the US in its healthcare methods. The US should learn from other countries how to strengthen the health system.

Americans are faring much worse mentally and financially during the COVID-19 pandemic than citizens of other high-income countries around the world, according to an international analysis.

One-third of U.S. adults say they've experienced unbearable stress, anxiety and sadness during the pandemic and more than 30% have faced economic hardships, the Commonwealth Fund report revealed.

"Data from our research demonstrates that U.S. adults, when compared to people in eight other high-income countries, face greater mental health and financial consequences from the COVID-19 pandemic," said Reginald Williams II, a vice president at Commonwealth Fund, a private foundation that studies health care issues. "It is also notable that few U.S. adults believe that national leadership has done a good job of managing the pandemic when compared to other countries."

Only one-third of Americans said President Donald Trump has done a "very good" or "good" job in handling COVID-19 -- a lack of faith in government not shared by most people in other developed nations, the survey found.

"It's no secret that at a time when countries around the world are reopening, ours is still struggling to return to work and daily life," said Dr. David Blumenthal, president of the Commonwealth Fund.

"As the number of confirmed COVID cases and deaths in the U.S. continue to climb, we need to start implementing public health measures that we know work, like mask-wearing, social distancing, and robust testing and tracing that can help us stop the spread of COVID-19 as so many others have effectively accomplished," he said.

The Commonwealth Fund has been comparing health systems around the world for decades, but the COVID-19 pandemic presents a rare instance in which every nation surveyed is facing the same crisis at the same time, Blumenthal said.

Between March and May, the organization interviewed more than 8,200 adults in nationally representative samples from Australia, Canada, France, Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, the United Kingdom and the United States.

Health experts on Saturday continued to urge communities to use caution and planning when considering whether to send students back to school, after the US got its first glimpse this week at how Covid-19 could reshape education.
"We have to ask the question, are we willing to live with the end result of the inevitable situation where teachers are going to become infected?" asked Dr. Michael Saag, associate dean for Global Health at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.
"Are we willing to live with those consequences?" he said. "Because I think that's what we're going to see in about three months from now, unfortunately, with the rates of infection that we have."
I hope that when it comes to whether schools are open or not, less consideration should be given to electoral factors and more scientific judgments should be made.

Time has passed so long. Why does the solution to the pandemic still look like nowhere?

If you look at what's going on in Europe and the United States, you'll see that all the safeguards we've taken are useful.

This is a new development of the epidemic situation in the United States that is worthy of our attention. Compared with our country, our medical service has a gap, so we should be more vigilant.

The virus has no national boundaries. If a country does not control it, all countries will not be safe. The United States, which has the most advanced medical treatment, has the situation of incomplete epidemic data, which is worrying.


As the coronavirus continues to tear through the U.S. with more than 1,000 coronavirus-related deaths reported on Tuesday alone, most states are falling short in reporting critical information needed to track and curb the spread of COVID-19, according to an analysis released Tuesday.

The report released by Resolve to Save Lives, a nonprofit led by former Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) director Tom Frieden and part of the global health organization Vital Strategies, claims to be the first comprehensive review of COVID-19 data in all 50 states.

The analysis argues that incomplete and inconsistent COVID-19 data from states, along with the absence of national leadership, is behind the U.S.'s poor response to the pandemic.

The report claims that across the U.S., only 40 percent of essential data points are being monitored and reported publicly, while more than half of essential information is not reported at all.

According to the report, not a single state reported turnaround time for testing, how quickly patients are isolated, or the proportion of cases diagnosed among individuals who were exposed to a COVID-19 patient. Only two states publish data on how quickly contact tracers are able to interview people testing positive to learn about their potential contacts. The report’s authors say these indicators are essential to track and respond to the virus.

“States around the country have done good work. They’ve been doing the challenging, hard, meticulous job of collecting, analyzing and presenting crucial information,” Frieden said during a news briefing Tuesday.

“But because of the lack of national leadership, we don’t have common standards, definitions, targets or accountability,” he said.

Frieden said as a result the U.S is “flying blind” in its effort to curb the spread of COVID-19.

Resolve to Save Lives, along with the American Public Health Association (APHA) and the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, are recommending states and counties report 15 indicators they say are essential for an effective response to the outbreak.

The indicators include more data on confirmed and probable cases, percentage of new cases linked to known cases, testing and contact tracing performance indicators and others. Every state and county should be able to collect and publish nine of the indicators immediately and the others within a few weeks, according to the report.

The CDC says it is already tracking, or has plans to track, 14 of the 15 indicators recommended, according to The Washington Post.

“CDC is always looking at best practices for ways to enhance, consolidate and report data, to make it easier for states and the public to access,” the CDC said in a statement to the Post.

Meanwhile, Michael R. Caputo, assistant secretary for public affairs at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), pushed back against the report’s criticism of the U.S. response.

“While Frieden scrambles for relevance, the team at CDC under Dr. [Robert] Redfield’s leadership has already accomplished the very things Frieden calls for. We’re providing open and transparent data to scientists, researchers, and the public on a level Frieden never accomplished gathering data by fax,” Caputo said according to The Washington Post.

The U.S. continues to lead the world in the number of coronavirus cases and deaths, with more than 3.9 million cases and more than 142,000 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University data.

Nothing in the world is more important than life.

Wearing masks is essential. Don't create new cases.

After so much debate, trump finally put on his mask.Wearing a mask is not only to protect yourself, but also to protect others. Don't let yourself regret it.

A country's epidemic prevention policy must indeed be based on science and strictly implemented. US medical technology is not enough to explain the current large number of infected people.

The emergence of vaccines represents that the United States has finally faced covid-19 squarely. Looking forward to the follow-up development.