A staff member of Martha's Table, a local nonprofit organization, distributes bags of donated groceries to residents in the Buena Vista neighborhood during the COVID-19 outbreak, in Washington, U.S., May 4, 2020. /Reuters
**Editor's note: **The following article is taken from the Chinese-language opinion column "The Real Point".
Despite being equipped with the best medical facilities in the world, the U.S. has contributed the most confirmed COVID-19 cases and deaths, as well as becoming a major source of the contagion. Each of these deserve a deeper examination.
American politicians and diplomats, such as Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, continue to ignore the dire situation at home, choosing instead to spread rumors about the origin of the coronavirus. They want an "international investigation" targeting China to shift blame away from the insufficient response of the U.S. government, further shirking its responsibility in causing further global spread.
An investigation is needed to examine the reasons behind the United States' failure, its responsibilities and the skeletons in their closet.
To address public concerns, international bodies, including the World Health Organization, should have access to conduct field research inside the bio-laboratory at Fort Detrick. A petition on the White House website is calling for disclosure of the reasons behind its shutdown last July to clarify whether it was tasked with coronavirus research and whether there was a leakage of hazardous waste.
The concerns are valid given the dark past of the lab. Politico reported that "in the 1950s and 1960s, it was the center of the U.S. government's darkest experiments." The article said that the lab was the CIA's secret chemical and mind-control experiment campus.
Further, the U.S. government should cooperate with international investigators to determine whether the seasonal flu was used as a cover-up for the coronavirus. A February report from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) shows that some 30 million Americans have been infected with seasonal flu since last September, but how many were really infected with COVID-19?
When CDC director Dr. Robert Redfield was asked about this in March, he replied that "some cases have actually been diagnosed that way in the United States today." Could the so-called "patient zero" be found in the U.S.? These deserve answers, too.
The timeline of the epidemic's appearance in the U.S. should also be identified under international scrutiny. According to The Los Angeles Times, postmortem testing has indicated that Santa Clara County saw its earliest death of COVID-19 on February 6, which is three weeks earlier than the first death announced by the CDC.
This earlier death of a COVID-19 patient in the U.S. had no history of overseas travel and is believed to have been infected with the virus in the community. Dr. Jeff Smith, Santa Clara County's Chief Executive, has suggested that the virus could have been in the Bay Area and circulating since December. Therefore, it is crucial to identify "patient zero" on U.S. soil.
The pandemic is occurring in many places around the world with no known origin. Any international investigation requires justice and equity. All related countries should undergo investigation, including the United States. This is the only righteous way to determine the origin of the pandemic and to provide answers for the human society.
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