Full text of research report on US responsibility for global spread of COVID-19

II. The United States is the main force of global COVID-19 spread

As the country with the highest numbers of confirmed COVID-19 cases and deaths in the world, the United States has yet walked out of the abyss of the pandemic. The Delta variant is spreading in a faster speed, leading to sharp daily increases of confirmed cases in the United States. So far, the country's confirmed cases has exceeded 48 million, and the death toll has surpassed 790,000.

In an editorial published by the U.S.-based New England Journal of Medicine, it said the United States has "failed at almost every step" in handling the pandemic. Following the outbreak of the pandemic, Washington's various error-ridden internal and foreign policies have not only caused the collapse of its own pandemic control, but also accelerated the spread of the global pandemic. The United States has repatriated illegal migrants, opened for travel, rotated its troops in foreign countries, and conducted military exercises. These unconventional moves have introduced U.S. domestic COVID-19 infections into other countries and regions, and made the country became the major force that prompted the large scale spread of the global pandemic.

1. Missing the best time to control the pandemic at early stage

The United States once misjudged the COVID-19 as flu, making it more difficult to detect the pandemic in early times. From June 28 to October 3, 2019, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) received over 1,000 cases of vaping-related pneumonia, with 18 deaths and a mortality rate of nearly 2 percent. The CDC officials admitted that they have some "early cases of COVID-19 that were misdiagnosed as flu or other illness," but so far it has not released details of those cases.

According to the New York Times, the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services has warned the potential severity of the pandemic as early as January 18, 2020, but the White House ignored it. From late January to the end of March, the White House turned a deaf ear to warnings from the WHO, American experts and data models and still acted slowly, resulting in the rapid spread of the pandemic across the country. With the most developed medical system in the world, the United States failed to prevent and control the coronavirus in its early stage, and paid less attention to it, damaging the health of the American people. Meanwhile, the world has been not able to share the country's advanced experience in prevention, control and medical treatment, and the global capacity of pandemic prevention and control has been greatly undermined.

2. Open-door policy exacerbated global spread

Affected by many factors such as the strong concept of so-called "human rights and freedom," the weak quality of natural science knowledge of the people at the bottom, federalism and the presidential election, the United States has not implemented science-based pandemic prevention measures, with frequent flow of people in the country and lax policies on outbound travel. The irresponsible and lax outbound travel measures taken by the United States, which is at the epicenter of the pandemic, have directly caused the global outbreak of the pandemic.

While most countries are imposing strict prevention and control measures during the pandemic, the United States adopted a laissez-faire policy. Some basic measures, including wearing masks, social distancing and practicing stay-at-home order, have not yet become a consensus in the U.S. society. The lack of timely lockdown measures has accelerated the spread of pandemic across the United States. Mutated viruses are circulating wantonly, and the infection and death rates are remaining high, even setting a global record of over 400,000 newly confirmed cases in a single day. Untimely "reopening" cumbered not only the epidemic prevention and control of the United States itself, but also added a burden to the world.

In early August of 2020, the total confirmed cases worldwide were close to 20 million, of which nearly 5 million came from the United States.

The U.S. State Department, however, announced at that time a lift of a Level 4 travel advisory that had instructed citizens to avoid all international travels, claiming that the pandemic had been under control and that there is a need to reopen for economic recovery.

This reckless move took a heavy toll on the world.

According to data released by the National Tourism Office of the United States, from April 2020 to March 2021, a total of 23.195 million U.S. citizens traveled abroad via air and land. From November 2020 to January 2021, the United States witnessed a peak in the pandemic, with an average of daily confirmed cases reaching 186,000, while the number of citizens traveling abroad also reaching a high point of 87,000 per day.

The overlapping peaks resulted in a rapid global spread of the pandemic from the United States. According to reports, 30 percent of the 7,000 imported cases in South Korea and 14 percent of the 6,000 confirmed cases in Australia were from the United States.

3. Irresponsibly repatriated immigrants, exporting cases worldwide

The United States has continued to deport undocumented immigrants during the pandemic and pushed up imported caseloads worldwide, which is an extreme disrespect for life.

On May 13, 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) called for a halt to repatriation of immigrants so as to curb the outbreak of the pandemic globally.

However, the United States, with the world's most COVID-19 cases, failed to suspend deportations in a timely manner. Instead, the country continued to send thousands of immigrants to vulnerable countries lacking equipment and capabilities to address the pandemic.

Data from the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) showed that from March to mid-June 2020 alone, the number of deportations of similar immigrants from U.S. customs detention centers was nearly 40,000. In 2020, the ICE expelled about 186,000 people, up by 160 percent compared to 2019.

In addition, the repatriation covered 61 destinations, including Guatemala, Honduras, Salvador, Brazil, Nicaragua, Ecuador, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Columbia, Mexico, and Jamaica. The Guatemalan government said in late April 2020 that nearly one-fifth of the country's COVID-19 cases were related to those deported by the United States.

4. U.S. troops overseas repeatedly violated epidemic prevention protocols, speeding up transmission

U.S. military personnel broke protocols when visiting Vietnam, leading to a large-scale outbreak in the Southeast Asian country.

In March 2020, U.S. Navy aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt docked at the Vietnamese coastal city of Da Nang.

Many Vietnamese paid a visit to the vessel where there were no precautionary measures at all, while around 5,000 U.S. officers and sailors disembarked to tour the city. A massive outbreak of COVID-19 cases began in Vietnam after the aircraft carrier left.

U.S. troops in Japan and South Korea gathered for Independence Day celebrations, leading to local outbreaks.

In July 2020, U.S. soldiers quarantined at a Hilton Hotel in Okinawa, Japan went downtown for a U.S. Independence Day celebration party, violating local quarantine protocols. They did not wear masks, nor maintain social distancing.

The prefecture, which had previously reported no cases, saw a surge of infections after the event.

In July 2020, U.S. soldiers in South Korea's Osan and Daegu went to Busan and gathered for Independence Day celebrations, setting off firecrackers while maskless, leading to a spike of daily cases locally.

5. U.S. failure to control COVID-19 in int'l events leads to "superspreading"

A biotech conference in Boston in February 2020, which was flagged as a COVID-19 superspreading event, led to at least 245,000 other cases across the U.S. and Europe, according to a CNN report on Dec. 11, 2020, citing a genetic fingerprinting study led by the team at the Broad Institute in Massachusetts.

Their study, published in Science, found two particular genetic fingerprints of viruses associated with the conference and then tracks those lineages across the United States. One was spread from Boston to 29 U.S. states as well as to other countries, including Australia, Sweden, and Slovakia.

The study also found that a subset of the viral strain with a mutation ended up infecting 88,000 people. This means this conference, attended by about 200 people from across the world and without any protective measures, seeded thousands of infections.

6. Unilateral sanctions lead to humanitarian crisis

Whether the global pandemic could be controlled depends not on the countries who've handled the virus the best, but the weakest ones.

As the pandemic continues to rage across the world, the United States refused to lift sanctions on some countries out of its geo-political considerations. This made it hard for those countries to get access to medical supplies and humanitarian assistance, crippling their abilities in containing the virus.

Take Iran as an example. The U.S. not only turn a deaf ear to the request from the international community to ease sanctions on Iran, but introduced more in the COVID-19 era. This resulted in a burst of infections during the early stages of the pandemic. Iran once ranked No. 9 in global confirmed cases.

Due to U.S.-imposed sanctions, Middle East, Latin-American and African countries with weak public health systems, suffered a huge loss and severe humanitarian crisis.