More than 20 bills have so far been introduced to the US Congress to impose sanctions over China’s handling of the pandemic, according to the US Congress website.

While frontline workers and essential workers in the US are risking their lives performing their most-needed job duties, policymakers keep their hands tied to slandering China and pulling the public’s focus away from the immense life and economic costs of COVID-19 as a result of a poor response mechanism.

The US has become the hardest-hit country by the pandemic: The death toll of COVID-19 in the US has just exceeded 100,000 on Thursday. Data from the US Department of Labor shows that the unemployment rate has jumped to 14.7 percent in April, the highest since the Great Depression. Although US President Donald Trump repeatedly claimed that the US leads the world in testing capacity, the Associated Press reported on Sunday that the White House failed to meet its goal of testing every resident and staff at nursing homes across the country.

The virus knows no borders. It’s heart-wrenching to see the number of infections and deaths from the virus rise every day in the US even as a foreigner. Still, it shocked me that the current administration turned a blind eye to China’s efforts in the global battle against the pandemic, including direct exports and donations of emergent supplies to the US, and misled their people by blaming China for their own mistakes.

In addition, several lawsuits have been filed in the US to sue China for damages related to COVID-19. But the nature of such lawsuits is seen through by legal experts in the US, with one law professor describing these lawsuits as “symbolic” and “political” in an article published on Los Angeles Times.

Some Republicans early on proposed the so-called “Stop China-Originated Viral Infectious Diseases (COVID) Act,” a bill that will empower Americans to take China in courts without encountering legal restrictions by the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act of 1976. With no doubt, this move severely violated international law and principles of international relations. At the same time, seeking damages from China at the expense of nullifying a law signed more than 40 years ago again exposed the political scheme of these politicians.

Sanctioning China won’t make the pandemic disappear. If the US continues to focus on scapegoating China rather than saving lives with all its efforts, not only all Americans but the entire world will be subject to the consequences of losing the best shot at containing the epidemic. True leaders of a country will constantly make improvements to the governing mechanisms based on science and facts, not fueling the public’s sentiments with misinformation and conspiracy theories so as to gain any political leverage.