The Belt and Road News Network>>BRI News>>Latest News

How the USA has become a melting pot for anti-science 'viruses'

By Li Yidan, Qing Ming, Xian Jiangnan, Liu Ning    People's Daily Online   08:04, September 02, 2021

For those who have been keeping up with America's COVID-19 stories, you've certainly been getting all your daily doses of puzzlement: how does the world's only superpower surrender to a fourth wave, even with its ample supply of vaccines?

To answer this question, we need to look at three groups of people: anti-vaxxers, anti-maskers and conspiracists. Together, they define America's chaotic COVID-19 response, turning the country into a melting pot for anti-science 'viruses'.

Let's begin with anti-vaxxers. You know what, the divide in COVID-19 vaccination rates in the US is now widening dangerously along partisan lines. While some states are pushing door-to-door COVID jabs, other states are bucking the trend, saying things like "Not on my watch!" It seems that everything, including matters of life or death, is now best viewed through a partisan lens.

But the fact is, the incessant partisan quarrels over vaccines can never encourage the public to get vaccinated, pretty much like all-day-long fights between parents won't persuade their child into eating healthy. And this political polarization is killing people, because the virus is, obviously, nonpartisan.

An equally baffling problem is the mask issue: to wear or not to wear a mask, that is the question for millions of Americans. And who on earth should the public listen to? No one has a definite answer. That's because health experts and politicians—ranging from Dr. Anthony Fauci and the head of the CDC, to Joe Biden, Donald Trump, and even Barack Obama—have kept sending clashing and inconsistent messages to a baffled public.