BEIJING - The United States has flunked a nearly two-year COVID-19 pandemic stress test and exposed its institutional failure which added people's distrust and anger on the country's the pandemic response, said a columnist of The New York Times.

"The pandemic has proved to be a nearly two-year stress test that the United States flunked, with an already distrustful populace exposed to a level of institutional failure that added fuel to the angry battles over how to respond," said Zeynep Tufekci, an opinion columnist, in an article on the newspaper on Thursday.

The United States is "bankrupt" in trust as its people have lost confidence during the epidemic, the columnist said, citing Martin Cetron, a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention veteran of battles against Ebola in Africa.

The United States has many leading pharmaceutical companies and academic research institutions in the world, but the fact that the country performed "so poorly" in its pandemic response is a profound sign of the decay of its institutions and capacity, according to the article.

The reason why the United States -- once considered the global leader in public health -- is floundering in mistrust, paranoia and exhaustion, needs to be reviewed, it added.