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Behind the glaring U.S. COVID-19 deaths: Indifference, racism and shifting blame
Maitreya Bhakal
04:20

Editor's note: Since the outbreak of the COVID-19, the United States has seen more than 35 million cases and nearly 630,000 deaths. As the world's largest economy, the country seems to be incapable of controlling the pandemic. Maitreya Bhakal, an Indian commentator who writes about China, India, the U.S. and global issues, shares his view on the reasons behind the alarming deaths. The opinions expressed in the video are his own, and not necessarily those of CGTN.

CGTN: Nearly 630,000 people have died of COVID-19 in the U.S. so far. What are the reasons behind the current COVID-19 situation in the U.S.?

Maitreya Bhakal: The U.S. is a racist, warmongering state and the regime has very little concern for human life. If the U.S. can care so little about the millions upon millions of people that it has killed abroad in wars and bombings from Korea to Vietnam to Laos to Cambodia to Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, and the list is endless, if the U.S. can care so little about its own children dying from legally obtained guns in schools, if the U.S. can care so little about thousands of people dying from drug overdoses, if the U.S. can care so little about its own police forces killing up to thousands of civilians every year, then it's hardly surprising that it does not care about a couple of hundred thousand people dying from a deadly disease.

I think we need to also think about the racial composition of the deaths. In the U.S. racial and ethnic minorities have a much higher risk of dying from COVID-19 deaths than the white majority. Compared to a white settler, a native indigenous person of the U.S. is twice as likely to die from COVID-19 and the figures are similar for other racial minorities as well.

So I think it is utterly unsurprising that the U.S. has so many deaths in the COVID-19. It is utterly unsurprising that the U.S. is not tackling it on a war footing. It is very happy to go to war and kill millions of people, but when it comes to tackling a pandemic on a war footing, then the U.S. regime is not very interested in saving people's lives.

CGTN: Facing the severe crisis at home, the Biden administration has been shifting blame on China. How will this affect the U.S.' COVID-19 situation and the China-U.S. ties, which is already at a low?

Maitreya: The U.S. regime has a long history of trying to distract attention from domestic problems. This is a very standard response for Western regimes. They try to distract attention from the economy, from problems at home, and blame it all on an external factor.

The U.S. didn't socialize during the Cold War, socialism was the official enemy, the Soviet Union was the official enemy. And then after the Cold War, a radical Islamic fundamentalist terrorist became the official enemy. After that, today it seems that China is the official enemy. So when faced with a national crisis, the U.S. has two responses. 

The first is denial and the next is to blame it on a foreign power to distract attention from the U.S. response to the crisis. So even in the COVID-19 pandemic, the same thing happened. When the pandemic first hit the U.S. soil in early 2020, the U.S. regime first sought to deny it.

When that didn't work, when people still kept on dying, then the U.S. regime started blaming China. They said that the virus has come from a lab or something. And U.S. media and the Western media spread racist and xenophobic tropes and orientalist stereotypes about China using all the yellow peril stereotypes that have been common in the U.S. for centuries now. 

The pandemic actually enabled the racist Western media to combine the traditional xenophobia in the U.S. with the U.S. hybrid war on China. So it was a godsend to them actually. And in all these propaganda campaigns, Americans kept dying and the U.S. regime did not care. They made money from the pandemic.

Interviewer: Yang Chuchu

Video editor: Feng Ran

Graphic designer:  Liu Shaozhen

Managing editor: Yang Chuchu

Associate producer: Wang Xinyan

Senior producer:  Bi Jianlu

Managing director: Mei Yan

(If you want to contribute and have specific expertise, please contact us at opinions@cgtn.com.)

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