ep01: POLITICS

Title: The Politics of Pandemic

Description: When COVID-19 first appeared in the U.S., then President Trump said, “The virus won’t have a chance, it’s going to disappear.” This month, his successor President Biden said something entirely different: “Today we mark a tragic milestone in the U.S.” – 1 million COVID-19 deaths. But was it only the pandemic that caused the deaths and devastation? Wang Guan explores how politicians and some media campaigned against science and common sense and misinformation raised the death toll when vaccination could have brought it down.

ep02：MISTAKES

Title: When Mistakes Led to 1 Million Deaths

Description: CGTN’s special program looks at the role played by mixed messages during the pandemic, how they confused people and worsened the situation. While health authorities advocated wearing masks in indoor public spaces, anti-mask movements called for scrapping masks in the name of freedom. Health workers were exhausted and lacked resources while the rich hospitals got more government largesse. And even worse, doctors and nurses had to decide which patients to save, and which ones to leave to die.

ep03：PROFITEERS

Title: Thriving on Suffering

Description: COVID-19 may be called today’s whistle blower. Wang Guan looks at how it has exposed the longstanding systemic problems in U.S. healthcare. It’s a for-profit industry that follows a “business model of greed” and is booming while people are suffering. It spends billions of dollars to lobby politicians and the money actually comes from the pocket of the common man, who is saddled with inflated hospital bills.

ep04：VICTIMS

Title: Disparities in Death

Description: CGTN’s Wang Guan hones in on the people who have suffered most during the pandemic. An official calls it “vastly disproportionate amount of suffering in black and brown people”. Racism pervades healthcare, making black Americans shy away from the healthcare system due to past unethical experiments on blacks that destroyed their lives. Those historical memories have created a distrust that has survived generation after generation. Children are also a major victim. More than 200,000 youngsters have lost their parents or primary caregivers and face being placed in institutions where abuse and sexual molestation abound and could scar the for life.

ep05：AFTERMATH

Title: How to Manage a Pandemic

Description: The 1-million death toll in the U.S. doesn’t mean the pandemic is over. New cases have been spiking in May as the virus mutates and transmits at an inconceivable level. Those who survive may have to live with chronic syndromes such as lung, heart or kidney diseases. The way ahead is managing the pandemic, which also means addressing the polarization, widening inequalities and public health system decay. But most of all, it means letting science prevail over geopolitics.