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Much has been made over the past few weeks of Bloomberg's so-called COVID Resilience Ranking whereby the U.S.-based news outlet ranked America itself as apparently the "best" and most "resilient" place to be in the world during the pandemic. 

Whilst it has already been pointed out that the scale of the U.S. death toll and confirmed case numbers, the rapid spread of the Delta variant and uneven vaccination distribution all render this utterly nonsensical, with Bloomberg instead focusing on a "business and travel" angle, how was this article and its accompanying video nonetheless received by international audiences around the world?

Following comments from China's Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian who denounced the article as a "childish stunt," a study by CTR Market Research has found the majority of global audience see the ranking as a "joke."

First of all, the video presentation of the study received far less interest than other topics on Bloomberg. After comments with Zhao, the views peaked in line with a normal journalistic trend. However, the analysis found that amongst those who responded to the video, the responses were almost exclusively negative. Dislikes on the video were weighed at 78 percent. Of the 171 replies to the video in the comments, 73 percent of them were likewise of a negative connotation.

After investigating the tone of these negative replies, the study found "joke," "fake" and "shameless" were among the most frequently used words, showing distrust towards the video from users. Just have a look at the replies which received the highest number of likes – "This country has 600,000 people dead for COVID ranking in number one place! What a joke!" "Is this ranking a joke? Who are you trying to convince with this kind of ranking or support? Republicans?" Others also pointed out that even though China has had COVID-19 under control for over a year, "positive news" about the country had to be censored.

The analysis also sought to investigate the countries which reposted or cited this Bloomberg article in their own news reports in order to gauge how well it was received. This was only found to include the United States, South Korea, Malaysia, the Philippines, Israel, New Zealand, Argentina and Turkey.

These eight countries only constituted 15 percent of those listed in the Bloomberg rankings as a whole, illustrating disinterest towards it internationally. Newshub from New Zealand likewise questioned the credibility of the data, given that New Zealand has frequently avoided major COVID-19 outbreaks and large-scale deaths, making it strange that Australia should be placed ahead of it.

In this case, does the Bloomberg study have any credibility? Or any basis in reality? The answer is quite plainly that this "resilience" report is an extension of U.S. corporate propaganda. In a COVID-focused study, American media outlets are not giving much weight to humanitarian and health factors, portraying situations such as tight controls, lockdowns and border restrictions as "negative" indicators, as opposed to the wellbeing of its people.

In this case, the response to such a study finds that world at large does not perceive the United States to have seriously handled the pandemic well. The facts quite plainly speak for themselves.

Whilst Bloomberg tries to hide this, being the fastest country to open up at a total expense of precaution and consideration for human life is not a sign of strength. It's a sign of chaos, negligence and disaster. America's battle with the virus quite obviously isn't over yet, and we're starting to see this situation materialize now.

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