White flags are seen on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., the United States, on Sept. 16, 2021. More than 660,000 white flags were installed here to honor the lives lost to COVID-19 in the United States.Photo:Xinhua

How long has the US, the world's sole superpower, not brought the world any good news? At the beginning of the new year, the US once again rattled the world: more than 1 million COVID-19 cases were reported in a single day as of Monday evening US time, setting a daily global record, according to Johns Hopkins University data.
The US has been a constant record-breaker in terms of the number of infected people. Time changed from 2020 to 2022, and the US president changed from Trump to Biden, but what remains unchanged are some of the key words in the US' pandemic fight - disorder and politicization. 
The severity of the pandemic in the US under Biden is no better than under Trump. Why does the situation run out of control in the US? It is not about which president is sitting in the Oval Office. 
Bad policies, distorted by partisanship, has cost nearly 830,000 American lives. Federal mandates are disregarded by Republican state governors. As this year's midterm elections loom large, how to attract more votes and win over each other will continue to dominate the next phase of the pandemic fight in the US.
Wei Zongyou, a professor at the Center for American Studies of Fudan University, told the Global Times that lies told by the two parties shape the US society's understanding of the pandemic and lead to the Americans not to give a damn about the pandemic fight. Meanwhile, political correctness in the US has become hysterical. 
George Calhoun, a professor at the Stevens Institute of Technology, made a sensational claim in a Forbes article on Sunday that China is intentionally underreporting its COVID-19 deaths, citing a previous model that has proven problematic. He asserted that China's cumulative death toll is likely at least double that of the US, and the figure is manipulated by the Chinese authorities, and thus unreliable. 
Americans like Calhoun cannot fairly face the fact that the death rate in the US is 800 times that of China. China sticks to its dynamic zero-COVID policy to minimize the infections and human lives loss, while the US embraces coexistence with the virus with the piling of corpses. Which is humane? Which is barbaric? One doesn't need much wit to draw the conclusion.
China is facing a big test in the wake of the current outbreak in Xi'an. Although the response from local authorities has sparked public dissatisfaction, Chinese society still has confidence in overcoming this round of outbreak, thanks to the experiences the country has gained in the past two years. On Saturday, Xi'an's daily case count dropped for the first time in more than a week to 122, followed by Sunday's 90 cases and Monday's 95 cases. Even CNN, which questioned China's "heavy-handed" approach, admitted that "if the trend continues, it will likely be only a matter of weeks before Xi'an successfully contains its outbreak as other cities have in the past."
China's systematic strength is able to forcefully hedge against the risks brought about by new waves of outbreaks, while the US systematic flaws have become the country's negative asset in coping with the ravaging pandemic. Against the background of surging COVID-19 cases, the US is still enthusiastic about manipulating politics by attempting to boycott the Olympic Winter Games in Beijing. To its dismay, the US' twisted mentality toward China's anti-pandemic achievements will not change the fact that China will hold the Olympic Games safely and successfully.