Photo: Xinhua

US President Donald Trump is eager to restart the US economy, but the number of COVID-19 deaths is still increasing in the country. The US' high mortality rate in this epidemic has led to a serious humanitarian crisis. The number of confirmed cases in the US is still growing at the speed of more than 20,000 every day, and over 40,000 people have died of the coronavirus. The world needs to ask why.

On Saturday, Trump said that the US mortality rate was 11.24 per 100,000 people while China's is only 0.33 per 100,000 people. Trump blasted it as "impossible." He was not answering our question, but was hiding something and shirking the US' responsibility.

The US is the world's most powerful country, but its mass confirmed cases and deaths have far exceeded the world's imagination. One of the most important reasons is that the US had made serious mistakes at the early stage because of its discrimination and prejudice against China's political system, and the blind confidence its strength.

The US did not pay enough attention to the information provided by China, or China's measures to comprehensively prevent the epidemic. The US also has serious misunderstandings about some of China's practices and data. For ex-ample, the US saw China's low mortality rate and simply assumed that the virus is not so fatal. But it ignored China's strict measures to control the epidemic. Some US media also used the so-called violation of human rights to criticize Wuhan's lockdown. Also, the treatment and test of COVID-19 has been free in China. But for a long time in the US, many patients' condition had worsened simply because of the expensive diagnosis and treatment costs.

Due to the US politicians' contempt for the virus, American people had almost no awareness of epidemic prevention at the early stage. Some of them were still throwing parties in mid-March, advocating "living in the moment." Many American people have had wrong concept of face masks. For example, on Saturday, hundreds of people gathered at state of Texas and some of them were holding slogans saying "My body, my choice," with a sign of against wearing masks on it.

Some American politicians have realized the seriousness of the problem after the US mortality rate increased. But they did not choose to compare the prevention and control measures between China and the US. Instead, they want to find fault in China, trying to prove that the US' relatively high mortality rate is because of China's so-called fake data. The US is trying to justify its high death toll, because the US government has regarded the COVID-19 fight as a political tool from the very beginning.

The US has not carefully analyzed how China has reduced its mortality rate to such a low level. This has led to the US' current epidemic situation. Washington has inescapable responsibility for this, and it cannot pass the buck to Beijing. The ordinary American people are paying for the US politicians' arrogance and prejudice. Hasn't Trump repeatedly emphasized "Make America great again?" Then he may as well start from this epidemic. Just tell the world, why have so many people died from the COVID-19 in the US?