NEW YORK - There have been two uniquely US phenomena in recent years: the deaths of children by gun violence and the deaths of elderly from COVID-19, as vital factors that influence well-being are ignored over the country's policymaking based on the wrong metrics, reported The Hill on Sunday.

"It's not a new idea that the well-being of a society is seen most clearly in the care it shows or doesn't show for its most vulnerable members," said the report, noting that "in leaving the most vulnerable among us unprotected against gunfire and the pandemic, our politics is laid bare for what it has become: the expression in politics of a larger culture of extravagant self-absorption".

The article quoted Hubert Humphrey, an American pharmacist and politician who served as the 38th vice president of the United States from 1965 to 1969, as saying that "the moral test of government is how that government treats those who are in the dawn of life, the children, those who are in the twilight of life, the elderly, those who are in the shadows of life, the sick, the needy, and the handicapped".

According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, firearms take the lives of 5.6 out of every 100,000 American children between ages 3 and 18. "No other developed nation is even close," said the report.

"Our record on COVID response is similarly dismal. Ranked first among 177 nations in our capacity to respond to a pandemic in November 2019, on the eve of the pandemic, the United States ranks last among wealthy nations and close to last among all nations in our infection and fatality rates," it added.