"The coronavirus didn't break America. It revealed what was already broken," one headline read in the June 2020 issue of The Atlantic magazine.

Due to the pandemic, the US saw a steep rise in unemployment and worsening disparity between rich and poor, according to a report from three Beijing think tanks.

The already enormous gap between rich and poor further widened in this period, the Beijing report alleged. Titled "'America Ranked First'?! The Truth about America's Fight against COVID-19", the scathing study enumerated the many ways US society has suffered due to the country's disastrous handling of the pandemic.