Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Anthony Fauci as US President Donald Trump dismisses a question during an unscheduled briefing after a Coronavirus Task Force meeting at the White House on Sunday, in Washington, DC. Photo: AFP

The US government's recent moves over COVID-19 can be summarized as "panic." 

To begin with, a 57-page memo unveiled in April, drafted by a Republican strategist, advises Republican candidates to attack China for COVID-19. US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo had been leaning increasingly harder into attacks on China over the origin of the novel coronavirus. Yet he recently changed his tune and noted there was no evidence backing up the lab release theory. US President Donald Trump also made a shift in his policies. He decided to disband the White House coronavirus task force on May 5, then flip-flopped abruptly and abandoned this idea the following day. These practices will ramp up Americans' distrust of the Trump administration.

Trump's unpredictable moves are entirely in line with his inconsistent style. In the face of doubts, his responses have never been to explain or fix them, but instead to create more conflicts in an attempt to divert focus. When smearing China became insufficient to shift the US public's attention on his poor leadership during the pandemic, Trump decided to hide sources of information. 

Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and member of the White House's coronavirus task force, has differing views from Trump - which explains why Fauci has been absent from several coronavirus briefings. On April 13, Trump even reposted a tweet that said, "Time to #FireFauci." The White House eventually barred Fauci from attending a House of Representatives hearing on America's coronavirus response on May 6. Trump's focus appears to shift from preventing the spread of COVID-19 to circumventing the spread of information. 

Although Trump clarified that the coronavirus task force will not disband anytime soon, the White House announced its attention to shift to security and opening up the country again. Medical scientists will remain in their positions on the task force, but the group's role has been politicized.

Trump's action can be seen as an overreaction toward his administration's failures before the upcoming election in November. US' surging unemployment rate, plummeting stocks, over 1.36 million confirmed coronavirus cases as of Wednesday, and repeated criticisms from Democrats have all put Trump's reelection campaign on the firing line. 

The Trump administration has resorted to a once-and-for-all tactic of smearing China in order to shift domestic attention and hijack the campaign strategy of the Democratic Party. 

At the beginning, such tactics worked. The two main candidates started a race about who was tougher against China. As a result, public anger and dissatisfaction turned to China. Then the 57-page GOP memo was exposed. In the wake of a credibility crisis, the buck-passing strategy by Republicans will lose its allure. 

Meanwhile, the truth is surfacing. The mayor of Belleville, New Jersey, Michael Melham, who recently tested positive for the novel coronavirus antibodies, believed he contracted the virus back in November. Intelligence sources from the Five Eyes network, an intelligence-sharing alliance between Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the UK and the US, also contradicted the theory that COVID-19 leaked out of a laboratory. The Americans have increasingly realized that the domestic plight they are in is the result of both a natural disaster and man-made mistakes by their own incompetent government. It is not an alleged conspiracy from a foreign country.  

A day after saying that the White House COVID-19 task force would be winding down, Trump handed his senior advisor and son-in-law Jared Kushner the responsibility of helping develop a novel coronavirus vaccine. The move is sending a signal that the task force must serve the political objective of the US government - restarting the economy. The working logic was that Trump's bidding must be done, otherwise any other task force would be "refocused" or "dismantled."

An inflection point in the US is far from coming. Meanwhile, presidential elections top everything in the eyes of Trump. Politicians will resort to any possible means to secure election victory. But it is the ordinary American people who are made to suffer. To restart the US, it is imperative that US politicians focus on improving their governance instead of engaging in self-boasting and folly. They need to play an active role in the international anti-virus fight.

The author is a doctoral student of US diplomacy and China-US relationship studies at China Foreign Affairs University. opinion@globaltimes.com.cn


Newspaper headline: US makes shaky COVID-19 moves as panic management defines response