Illustration: Liu Rui/GT

The number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in the US has surpassed 2 million, with 112,000 deaths. The US president did not offer a specific - certainly not apologetic - response at this particular moment of COVID-19.

Do the Chinese remember when we were at the height of the epidemic, when three or four thousand people were diagnosed a day and hundreds died? At that time, the whole country mobilized, and protecting people's lives and health became the priority of the country. At the time, officials were being fired from key epidemic areas. Even if progress has been made, how can countries easily use words like "inflection point" to describe the situation?

But what people have heard from the US government is achievement, greater achievement, and greatest achievement. Millions of cases have been confirmed, and that's because the US has the highest detection capacity. More than 112,000 people died because of the 1 to 2 million deaths averted. US epidemiologist Anthony Fauci had predicted 100,000 to 200,000 deaths in the US. That awful number is already being tested, and may eventually be breached.

When news of the rising stock market and the death toll came together, we saw euphoria from the US president. A rising stock market is well and good, but can they spare a little compassion for the vulnerable who continue to be infected and die? Capitalism, capitalism, we come to know you are like this today.

The US has a strong capacity for COVID-19, but that's more of a capital capacity. It is the ability of the US elites to control society in the midst of the epidemic. The choice facing ordinary people is either to live in hardship, or to work at risk and become infected, which is not called endurance; it is a force of circumstance.

China is confronted with a lack of humanitarianism when dealing with capitalist countries such as the inhuman and brutal US, which has the ultimate greed and recklessness. They are unreasonable about human life, and can fool people. How easy it will be for them to lie about China and whip up extreme emotions by forming a public opinion that it's okay to kill a few people and let the flag of social Darwinism fly in the air. Once they think attacking China is profitable, they don't mind trampling on the rules.

A country that has fewer than 100,000 infected people and effectively stopped the spread of the virus is bound to differ greatly in values from a country that has 2 million infected people and has a strong government. On Wednesday, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said, "Our nation is so special and it's the greatest nation in the history of civilization." That's thicker than the walls of China. We need to be prepared for a lot of trouble from the US.

The author is editor-in-chief of the Global Times. opinion@globaltimes.com.cn