8 ms·

This makes sense. The only question is why this wasn't done as soon as travel was restarted and tests became readily available across the world. This is at lea

This makes sense. The only question is why this wasn't done as soon as travel was restarted and tests became readily available across the world. This is at least 6-9 months too late.

baybal2 6y ago
That's an irony. USA is pretty much a fortress for as long as border security goes, and it had the best chance of any nation to avoid Covid impact by shutting itself off from the world using mechanisms of border security only. Yet, for some completely unfathomable reason, it didn't.
- notadev 6y ago
  Perhaps it would have been considered xenophobic?
  - ceejayoz 6y ago
    If implemented in a xenophobic fashion, sure. "We're testing all international travelers" is gonna be hard to tag that way. "We're banning people coming in from China but allowing in US citizens or permanent residents untested and unscreened on those same flights" looks pretty dumb from an epidemiological standpoint. https://www.factcheck.org/2020/03/the-facts-on-trumps-travel-restrictions/ https://www.factcheck.org/2020/03/the-facts-on-trumps-travel... > “There’s no restriction on Americans going back and forth,” Klain said. “There are warnings. People should abide by those warnings. But today, 30 planes will land in Los Angeles that either originated in Beijing or came here on one-stops, 30 in San Francisco, 25 in New York City. Okay? So, unless we think that the color of the passport someone carries is a meaningful public health restriction, we have not placed a meaningful public health restriction.”
    - chris11 6y ago
      I don't really remember medical experts were saying in early 2020, but I would have supported banning specific countries if it was based on a framework that adjusted bans as the number of cases changed. I remember being unimpressed with the timing, starting the ban right after the super bowl was over was a bad idea. And the US should have immediately started working towards testing all travelers.
      - cma 6y ago
        When Trump banned China he put in all the press releases and announcement speeches that he also wanted to ban Mexico (0 known cases at the time). This easily led people to believe the whole thing was xenophobic.
        MereInterest 6y ago
        Don't forget his earlier travel bans against primarily Muslim countries, excluding countries that he personally does business with. A history of xenophobic actions from Trump means that he reasonably lost the benefit of the doubt for later cases.
    - mikelward 6y ago
      Australia only allows citizens and residents back in. AND they have to quarantine in designated facilities for two weeks. This is seriously failed leadership in the US. I haven't heard from anyone on either side calling for such measures.
  - deleted 6y ago
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  - FuckButtons 6y ago
    Pretty sure the trump administration wasn’t concerned about that.
  - paxys 6y ago
    Not likely, considering the side which calls border controls xenophobic was the one pushing for more restrictions to stop the spread of COVID.
  - aaronbrethorst 6y ago
    President Trump has never shied away from xenophobia from the day he announced his candidacy [1] to today when he gave a speech in Alamo, Texas [2] What Trump has done is try to minimize public concerns about COVID-19. [3] [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/06/16/theyre-rapists-presidents-trump-campaign-launch-speech-two-years-later-annotated/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/06/16/th... [2] https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2021/01/12/alamo-history-look-battle-trump-speaks-texas-rally/6635817002/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2021/01/12/alamo-... [3] https://www.washingtonpost.com/video/politics/40-times-trump-said-the-coronavirus-would-go-away/2020/04/30/d2593312-9593-4ec2-aff7-72c1438fca0e_video.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/video/politics/40-times-trump...
  - vkou 6y ago
    Only if implemented in an inconsistent fashion - where travel from some areas with high levels of COVID is permitted, while travel from other areas with much lower levels of COVID is not. Which is currently the case. For example, travel from Russia to the US is currently allowed, despite Russia having >3 million COVID cases, but travel from Finland (>37,000 COVID cases) and China (>97,000 COVID cases) is prohibited. It's not even a quid-pro-quo, because Russia has banned travel from the United States (>22,700,000 COVID cases, FYI.) If you want to stop travelers spreading COVID in the US, the first thing you should do is ban domestic travel, and the second thing you should do is to update the travel ban to include infection data from any point past ~April 2020. If you're not willing to require someone flying from New York to Nashville to have a negative COVID test before getting on an airplane, you probably shouldn't spend too much time wringing your hands over someone flying from Hanoi to LA without one.
    - sokoloff 6y ago
      That first person could drive from New York to Nashville perfectly freely. The drive from Hanoi to LA is much more difficult.
      - vkou 6y ago
        The first person would, most of the time, not bother making the drive, which would have the same mitigating effect on COVID transmission. The real reason for why domestic flights don't require negative tests is because it's politically inconvenient for the government to ask for them, and because it would gut airline revenue. "Controlling the spread" plays second fiddle to matters of political expediency and money. That, and it's much easier to impose restrictions on foreigners, even if, as of January 2021, those restrictions don't accomplish much.
    - Dylan16807 6y ago
      > Which is currently the case. For example, travel from Russia to the US is currently allowed, despite Russia having >3 million COVID cases, but travel from Finland (>37,000 COVID cases) and China (>97,000 COVID cases) is prohibited. China is doing great if those numbers can be trusted. But Finland having 80x fewer cases when they have 25x fewer people isn't a big enough difference that I would say "much lower levels".
- zaroth 6y ago
  You would need more than just a pre-travel testing requirement. You would also have needed an arrival quarantine and post-arrival testing. I wonder what percent of asymptomatic positive cases pre-arrival testing actually catches. I’m sure that number also changes depending on how many days before traveling you’re allowed to get the test. And to actually prevent COVID from entering the US, I think you would have needed all of that fully in place in January, or perhaps earlier. Effectively what this would have meant is a total border closure for several months at the beginning of the year. I’m not sure if that would have literally been impossible, but I think it’s totally fathomable why that didn’t happen.
  - ghaff 6y ago
    In January, outside of China (possibly elsewhere in Asia) absolutely everything was business as usual. I was traveling in Europe for 3 weeks at the end of January/beginning of February and everything was 100% normal. The absolute earliest I could see significant shutting down in the US would have been early March which is when companies started canceling events, etc.
    - rodgerd 6y ago
      Yes, that's about when it became politically feasible to close the borders in New Zealand, as well.
    - jcranmer 6y ago
      I don't have exact date timelines, but I know the large company I work for decided that the US was a coronavirus hotspot somewhere around the end of February and the beginning of March and banned business travel to or within the US. It was only in mid-March that they shut down the offices themselves, a couple of days before state or local governments began locking down. I believe the current estimate is that there was uncontrolled community spread in the US by late February, and closing the borders to international travelers wouldn't have done anything to prevent its spread in the US.
      - ghaff 6y ago
- pishpash 6y ago
  The reason is the US has more infections than almost anywhere else so the enemy is already inside.
  - deleted 6y ago
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- cavisne 6y ago
  The US has two huge land borders that people regularly commute and trade across (not to mention cross illegally). The only success stories with this strategy are Australia and New Zealand, which are island nations completely isolated from anywhere else. Even single breaches of their 100% quarantine of all arrivals caused outbreaks, and they also closed state borders. This requirement begins to make sense now there is a vaccine, as within the US the curve should bend down vs the rest of the world, without the vaccine it wouldn't have achieved anything.
  - k0stas 6y ago
    > The only success stories with this strategy are Australia and New Zealand, which are island nations completely isolated from anywhere else. I don't know why it is ignored, but Vietnam (population 90M) is a large country with many land borders, including a border with China, and it has done spectacularly well containing the coronavirus. Not to take anything away from the island countries but having no land borders makes limiting the influx of Covid much simpler. I don't know much about Vietnam's borders and how much crossing there was in pre-Covid times but perhaps it should be the Covid success model that all non-island nations emulate.
  - kbar13 6y ago
    you can close land borders just as you can close air borders. the threat model is average joe unknowningly carrying the coronavirus on their vacation / business commute, not some special op team sneaking into the country.
  - ceejayoz 6y ago
    > The only success stories with this strategy are Australia and New Zealand, which are island nations completely isolated from anywhere else. Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam have all had good overall success. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/dec/16/thailand-cambodia-covid-19-cases-deaths-low https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/dec/16/thailand-cambo...
  - cmrdporcupine 6y ago
    The land border with Canada has been closed (at the Canadian government's request) since March. Only trade is allowed, no personal travel at all. So, no, I don't think it's impractical at all. Trump did complain a lot about us closing it, though. Air travel, however, has been permitted all along, and mostly from what I can tell because of the fact that the airline industry would go bankrupt otherwise. So there's still people coming into Canada from the US constantly by air, and likely breaking their 14 day quarantine period, too. I know of some personally. International travel is still being promoted heavily by airlines, despite governments giving official guidance to not go. Big scandals here in the last couple weeks about politicians taking off for tropical vacations, after instating tough lockdown rules and telling the public not to travel. Canada also instituted the negative test on arrival rule in the last week or so. The caterwauling from our airlines was just ridiculous. The federal governments in both Canada and the United States failed to make moves against travel early on, and they just let it coast for months, as if this virus was just going to go away on its own, because they were afraid of bankrupting the airlines.
- deleted 6y ago
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- InTheArena 6y ago
  I don't know if you remember, but when Trump started to cut of china, it was immediately taken to be yet another xenophobic action. Then it was a matter of rapid COVID tests not being available. It probably should been a few months ago.
  - chillwaves 6y ago
    Except that's not what he did. https://www.factcheck.org/2020/03/the-facts-on-trumps-travel-restrictions/ https://www.factcheck.org/2020/03/the-facts-on-trumps-travel...
  - amluto 6y ago
    It was. A sensible policy would have restricted all entries — at the time Trump restricted entry from China, there was no credible reason to believe that it hadn’t spread elsewhere.
- koolba 6y ago
  > Yet, for some completely unfathomable reason, it didn't. Let's not forget that President Trump's order for closing the borders with even just the source nation of the contagion was labeled by the incoming President-elect as xenophobic[1]: >> "We are in the midst of a crisis with the coronavirus. We need to lead the way with science — not Donald Trump’s record of hysteria, xenophobia, and fear-mongering. He is the worst possible person to lead our country through a global health emergency." [1]: https://twitter.com/JoeBiden/status/1223727977361338370 https://twitter.com/JoeBiden/status/1223727977361338370
- dizzystar 6y ago
  The relationship between border towns is very tight. You would ruin the entire southern economy if you banned cross-border travel entirely. Back in the day before Mexico required passports to enter, many people lived in Tijuana and worked in San Diego. I'm sure this still happens today, and of course, you have to consider that many migrants work in US farms, etc.
  - Baeocystin 6y ago
    San Ysidro is still the busiest border crossing in the world. It's nominally 'closed', but still open for trade. In normal times you don't need a full passport, either- just a passport card is fine, and realistically a CA driver's license will get you through without trouble. It kind of has to be that way- Tijuana and San Diego are far too closely tied together for much else.
    - deleted 6y ago
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  - flukus 6y ago
    Border closures don't have to be all or nothing. In Australia we closed borders between states but allowed work permits in some places and had fuzzy borders (people within 100km could cross) in others. No measures are 100%, but they don't need to be.
- throwaway7874 6y ago
  Unfathomable? People do have short memories. Remember this? https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/nancy-pelosi-visits-san-franciscos-chinatown/2240247/ https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/nancy-pelosi-visits-sa... Trump floated the idea of cancelling flights, initially from China, cause that was the only hot spot, back in Winter only to be called a racist.
  - bufferout 6y ago
    Can you explain what Pelosi's Chinatown visit has to do with flight cancellations. And also who called Trump a racist for proposing flight bans.
- cblconfederate 6y ago
  The UK is and island and they didn't do it either. It's learned helplessness: the world has given up on the idea that it's possible to contain the virus.
- Supermancho 6y ago
  > USA is pretty much a fortress for as long as border security goes More like a maginot line than a fortress.
- ErikVandeWater 6y ago
  By unfathomable, I suppose you mean political?
- generalizations 6y ago
  The US did try and close the borders. https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/proclamation-suspension-entry-immigrants-nonimmigrants-persons-pose-risk-transmitting-2019-novel-coronavirus/ https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/proclamation... https://www.cnn.com/2020/02/02/us/coronavirus-us-travel-restrictions/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2020/02/02/us/coronavirus-us-travel-rest...
foolfoolz 6y ago
testing capacity couldn’t support it. no use doing this when the results come a week later. if this was a requirement earlier everyone would have complained it was just theater and not helping
- peytn 6y ago
  I’m certain we could have figured out something earlier. We spend several billion dollars annually on an organization with a singular mandate to do so.
- wendyshu 6y ago
  I'm pretty sure people would have understood that requiring a positive test before entry is not just theater.
  - sokoloff 6y ago
    Negative test, not positive test (by the most common usage of the phrase).
- jaynetics 6y ago
  Maybe politicians should bite the bullet sometimes and do stuff that will not be immediately understood by every citizen. Even without tests being widely available it would have been wise to require all arrivals to quarantine, as Taiwan has done with great success. Yeah, sure, that would have been a nuisance for quite a few people and painful for the airline industry, true, but nowhere near as annoying and painful as things have ended up now.
  - MartianSquirrel 6y ago
    Long term benefits? check Good for our constituants? check Good for whoever pays for my campaign? check Oh, you say it will jeopardize my reelection? fuggetaboutit /s
- netsharc 6y ago
  In most countries they just want a negative test from the origin country, so the country being visited doesn't have to spend a test for the tourist. But it's not bulletproof, if someone tests false negative and flies and infects a few others. Other countries (Taiwan, NZ?) quarantine you for 14 days on arrival, and also test you...
anonunivgrad 6y ago
There's really no point. Hundreds to thousands of people are contracting covid every day in every city across America. Over the course of five days in December, there were one million new cases. People coming in on international flights is basically irrelevant. That could start to change if the vaccine causes community spread to plummet.
gibrown 6y ago
They should do it for all air travel whether international or domestic.
nostromo 6y ago
Covid testing hasn't been, and still isn't, universally available. Mexico, to pick one neighboring country with a lot of cross-border traffic and cultural ties to the US, has done 97% fewer tests than the US has, for example.
- deleted 6y ago
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- graeme 6y ago
  Do you mean per capita? If mexico did 97% less as an absolute number that would mean they test more than the US per capita.
  - doubleunplussed 6y ago
    How do you figure? Mexico and the US's populations only differ by a factor of ~2, and Mexico is the smaller one.
  - smnrchrds 6y ago
    Population of Mexico is 38% of the population of the US, not less than 3%.
    - graeme 6y ago
      Oops I read it backwards, as the US testing 97% more. My mistake.
cush 6y ago
> why wasn't this done as soon as travel was restarted Half our country's leadership being science deniers is a start
- peytn 6y ago
  I recall that the science deniers were the ones in favor of border restrictions. Besides, I don’t envy anybody whose position is so weak they must resort to finger pointing. A scientist would let the data speak.
  - us0r 6y ago
    > A scientist would let the data speak. Yet many schools in the US are still closed.
    - peytn 6y ago
      It’s clear through this all that we’ve seen great power wielded. Regardless of who you support, I hope anybody reading this remembers that there are more important things than winning. The government has a monopoly on violence. It doesn’t need you that much. Our kids are the losers when we allow ourselves to be pitted against each other.
  - cush 6y ago
    They based border restrictions on bigotry, not science. And the cost to wait and collect more of that data is time and corpses, so it's not so cut and dry.
    - peytn 6y ago
      I’m sorry, that just sounds like an excuse. The policy we chose was bad for almost a year. To me that’s inexcusable.
      - cush 6y ago
        An excuse for what...? What policy are you referring to?
jen20 6y ago
> The only question is why this wasn't done as soon as travel was restarted I'm not sure there was a point where travel was ever _stopped_? At least not for US citizens or residents. This is not to say the test requirement should not have been imposed (much) earlier, however!
SergeAx 6y ago
This doesn't make any sense. Requiring a test on entry to country with full-fledged epidemia is like asking for an umbrella on entrance to the swimming pool.

This makes sense. The only question is why this wasn't done as soon as travel was restarted and tests became readily available across the world. This is at least 6-9 months too late.

baybal2 6y ago

That's an irony. USA is pretty much a fortress for as long as border security goes, and it had the best chance of any nation to avoid Covid impact by shutting itself off from the world using mechanisms of border security only. Yet, for some completely unfathomable reason, it didn't.

notadev 6y ago
Perhaps it would have been considered xenophobic?
- ceejayoz 6y ago
  If implemented in a xenophobic fashion, sure. "We're testing all international travelers" is gonna be hard to tag that way. "We're banning people coming in from China but allowing in US citizens or permanent residents untested and unscreened on those same flights" looks pretty dumb from an epidemiological standpoint. https://www.factcheck.org/2020/03/the-facts-on-trumps-travel-restrictions/ https://www.factcheck.org/2020/03/the-facts-on-trumps-travel... > “There’s no restriction on Americans going back and forth,” Klain said. “There are warnings. People should abide by those warnings. But today, 30 planes will land in Los Angeles that either originated in Beijing or came here on one-stops, 30 in San Francisco, 25 in New York City. Okay? So, unless we think that the color of the passport someone carries is a meaningful public health restriction, we have not placed a meaningful public health restriction.”
  - chris11 6y ago
    I don't really remember medical experts were saying in early 2020, but I would have supported banning specific countries if it was based on a framework that adjusted bans as the number of cases changed. I remember being unimpressed with the timing, starting the ban right after the super bowl was over was a bad idea. And the US should have immediately started working towards testing all travelers.
    - cma 6y ago
      When Trump banned China he put in all the press releases and announcement speeches that he also wanted to ban Mexico (0 known cases at the time). This easily led people to believe the whole thing was xenophobic.
      - MereInterest 6y ago
        Don't forget his earlier travel bans against primarily Muslim countries, excluding countries that he personally does business with. A history of xenophobic actions from Trump means that he reasonably lost the benefit of the doubt for later cases.
  - mikelward 6y ago
    Australia only allows citizens and residents back in. AND they have to quarantine in designated facilities for two weeks. This is seriously failed leadership in the US. I haven't heard from anyone on either side calling for such measures.
- deleted 6y ago
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- FuckButtons 6y ago
  Pretty sure the trump administration wasn’t concerned about that.
- paxys 6y ago
  Not likely, considering the side which calls border controls xenophobic was the one pushing for more restrictions to stop the spread of COVID.
- aaronbrethorst 6y ago
  President Trump has never shied away from xenophobia from the day he announced his candidacy [1] to today when he gave a speech in Alamo, Texas [2] What Trump has done is try to minimize public concerns about COVID-19. [3] [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/06/16/theyre-rapists-presidents-trump-campaign-launch-speech-two-years-later-annotated/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/06/16/th... [2] https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2021/01/12/alamo-history-look-battle-trump-speaks-texas-rally/6635817002/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2021/01/12/alamo-... [3] https://www.washingtonpost.com/video/politics/40-times-trump-said-the-coronavirus-would-go-away/2020/04/30/d2593312-9593-4ec2-aff7-72c1438fca0e_video.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/video/politics/40-times-trump...
- vkou 6y ago
  Only if implemented in an inconsistent fashion - where travel from some areas with high levels of COVID is permitted, while travel from other areas with much lower levels of COVID is not. Which is currently the case. For example, travel from Russia to the US is currently allowed, despite Russia having >3 million COVID cases, but travel from Finland (>37,000 COVID cases) and China (>97,000 COVID cases) is prohibited. It's not even a quid-pro-quo, because Russia has banned travel from the United States (>22,700,000 COVID cases, FYI.) If you want to stop travelers spreading COVID in the US, the first thing you should do is ban domestic travel, and the second thing you should do is to update the travel ban to include infection data from any point past ~April 2020. If you're not willing to require someone flying from New York to Nashville to have a negative COVID test before getting on an airplane, you probably shouldn't spend too much time wringing your hands over someone flying from Hanoi to LA without one.
  - sokoloff 6y ago
    That first person could drive from New York to Nashville perfectly freely. The drive from Hanoi to LA is much more difficult.
    - vkou 6y ago
      The first person would, most of the time, not bother making the drive, which would have the same mitigating effect on COVID transmission. The real reason for why domestic flights don't require negative tests is because it's politically inconvenient for the government to ask for them, and because it would gut airline revenue. "Controlling the spread" plays second fiddle to matters of political expediency and money. That, and it's much easier to impose restrictions on foreigners, even if, as of January 2021, those restrictions don't accomplish much.
  - Dylan16807 6y ago
    > Which is currently the case. For example, travel from Russia to the US is currently allowed, despite Russia having >3 million COVID cases, but travel from Finland (>37,000 COVID cases) and China (>97,000 COVID cases) is prohibited. China is doing great if those numbers can be trusted. But Finland having 80x fewer cases when they have 25x fewer people isn't a big enough difference that I would say "much lower levels".
zaroth 6y ago
You would need more than just a pre-travel testing requirement. You would also have needed an arrival quarantine and post-arrival testing. I wonder what percent of asymptomatic positive cases pre-arrival testing actually catches. I’m sure that number also changes depending on how many days before traveling you’re allowed to get the test. And to actually prevent COVID from entering the US, I think you would have needed all of that fully in place in January, or perhaps earlier. Effectively what this would have meant is a total border closure for several months at the beginning of the year. I’m not sure if that would have literally been impossible, but I think it’s totally fathomable why that didn’t happen.
- ghaff 6y ago
  In January, outside of China (possibly elsewhere in Asia) absolutely everything was business as usual. I was traveling in Europe for 3 weeks at the end of January/beginning of February and everything was 100% normal. The absolute earliest I could see significant shutting down in the US would have been early March which is when companies started canceling events, etc.
  - rodgerd 6y ago
    Yes, that's about when it became politically feasible to close the borders in New Zealand, as well.
  - jcranmer 6y ago
    I don't have exact date timelines, but I know the large company I work for decided that the US was a coronavirus hotspot somewhere around the end of February and the beginning of March and banned business travel to or within the US. It was only in mid-March that they shut down the offices themselves, a couple of days before state or local governments began locking down. I believe the current estimate is that there was uncontrolled community spread in the US by late February, and closing the borders to international travelers wouldn't have done anything to prevent its spread in the US.
    - ghaff 6y ago
pishpash 6y ago
The reason is the US has more infections than almost anywhere else so the enemy is already inside.
- deleted 6y ago
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cavisne 6y ago
The US has two huge land borders that people regularly commute and trade across (not to mention cross illegally). The only success stories with this strategy are Australia and New Zealand, which are island nations completely isolated from anywhere else. Even single breaches of their 100% quarantine of all arrivals caused outbreaks, and they also closed state borders. This requirement begins to make sense now there is a vaccine, as within the US the curve should bend down vs the rest of the world, without the vaccine it wouldn't have achieved anything.
- k0stas 6y ago
  > The only success stories with this strategy are Australia and New Zealand, which are island nations completely isolated from anywhere else. I don't know why it is ignored, but Vietnam (population 90M) is a large country with many land borders, including a border with China, and it has done spectacularly well containing the coronavirus. Not to take anything away from the island countries but having no land borders makes limiting the influx of Covid much simpler. I don't know much about Vietnam's borders and how much crossing there was in pre-Covid times but perhaps it should be the Covid success model that all non-island nations emulate.
- kbar13 6y ago
  you can close land borders just as you can close air borders. the threat model is average joe unknowningly carrying the coronavirus on their vacation / business commute, not some special op team sneaking into the country.
- ceejayoz 6y ago
  > The only success stories with this strategy are Australia and New Zealand, which are island nations completely isolated from anywhere else. Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam have all had good overall success. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/dec/16/thailand-cambodia-covid-19-cases-deaths-low https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/dec/16/thailand-cambo...
- cmrdporcupine 6y ago
  The land border with Canada has been closed (at the Canadian government's request) since March. Only trade is allowed, no personal travel at all. So, no, I don't think it's impractical at all. Trump did complain a lot about us closing it, though. Air travel, however, has been permitted all along, and mostly from what I can tell because of the fact that the airline industry would go bankrupt otherwise. So there's still people coming into Canada from the US constantly by air, and likely breaking their 14 day quarantine period, too. I know of some personally. International travel is still being promoted heavily by airlines, despite governments giving official guidance to not go. Big scandals here in the last couple weeks about politicians taking off for tropical vacations, after instating tough lockdown rules and telling the public not to travel. Canada also instituted the negative test on arrival rule in the last week or so. The caterwauling from our airlines was just ridiculous. The federal governments in both Canada and the United States failed to make moves against travel early on, and they just let it coast for months, as if this virus was just going to go away on its own, because they were afraid of bankrupting the airlines.
deleted 6y ago
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InTheArena 6y ago
I don't know if you remember, but when Trump started to cut of china, it was immediately taken to be yet another xenophobic action. Then it was a matter of rapid COVID tests not being available. It probably should been a few months ago.
- chillwaves 6y ago
  Except that's not what he did. https://www.factcheck.org/2020/03/the-facts-on-trumps-travel-restrictions/ https://www.factcheck.org/2020/03/the-facts-on-trumps-travel...
- amluto 6y ago
  It was. A sensible policy would have restricted all entries — at the time Trump restricted entry from China, there was no credible reason to believe that it hadn’t spread elsewhere.
koolba 6y ago
> Yet, for some completely unfathomable reason, it didn't. Let's not forget that President Trump's order for closing the borders with even just the source nation of the contagion was labeled by the incoming President-elect as xenophobic[1]: >> "We are in the midst of a crisis with the coronavirus. We need to lead the way with science — not Donald Trump’s record of hysteria, xenophobia, and fear-mongering. He is the worst possible person to lead our country through a global health emergency." [1]: https://twitter.com/JoeBiden/status/1223727977361338370 https://twitter.com/JoeBiden/status/1223727977361338370
dizzystar 6y ago
The relationship between border towns is very tight. You would ruin the entire southern economy if you banned cross-border travel entirely. Back in the day before Mexico required passports to enter, many people lived in Tijuana and worked in San Diego. I'm sure this still happens today, and of course, you have to consider that many migrants work in US farms, etc.
- Baeocystin 6y ago
  San Ysidro is still the busiest border crossing in the world. It's nominally 'closed', but still open for trade. In normal times you don't need a full passport, either- just a passport card is fine, and realistically a CA driver's license will get you through without trouble. It kind of has to be that way- Tijuana and San Diego are far too closely tied together for much else.
  - deleted 6y ago
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- flukus 6y ago
  Border closures don't have to be all or nothing. In Australia we closed borders between states but allowed work permits in some places and had fuzzy borders (people within 100km could cross) in others. No measures are 100%, but they don't need to be.
throwaway7874 6y ago
Unfathomable? People do have short memories. Remember this? https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/nancy-pelosi-visits-san-franciscos-chinatown/2240247/ https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/nancy-pelosi-visits-sa... Trump floated the idea of cancelling flights, initially from China, cause that was the only hot spot, back in Winter only to be called a racist.
- bufferout 6y ago
  Can you explain what Pelosi's Chinatown visit has to do with flight cancellations. And also who called Trump a racist for proposing flight bans.
cblconfederate 6y ago
The UK is and island and they didn't do it either. It's learned helplessness: the world has given up on the idea that it's possible to contain the virus.
Supermancho 6y ago
> USA is pretty much a fortress for as long as border security goes More like a maginot line than a fortress.
ErikVandeWater 6y ago
By unfathomable, I suppose you mean political?
generalizations 6y ago
The US did try and close the borders. https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/proclamation-suspension-entry-immigrants-nonimmigrants-persons-pose-risk-transmitting-2019-novel-coronavirus/ https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/proclamation... https://www.cnn.com/2020/02/02/us/coronavirus-us-travel-restrictions/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2020/02/02/us/coronavirus-us-travel-rest...

foolfoolz 6y ago

testing capacity couldn’t support it. no use doing this when the results come a week later. if this was a requirement earlier everyone would have complained it was just theater and not helping

peytn 6y ago
I’m certain we could have figured out something earlier. We spend several billion dollars annually on an organization with a singular mandate to do so.
wendyshu 6y ago
I'm pretty sure people would have understood that requiring a positive test before entry is not just theater.
- sokoloff 6y ago
  Negative test, not positive test (by the most common usage of the phrase).
jaynetics 6y ago
Maybe politicians should bite the bullet sometimes and do stuff that will not be immediately understood by every citizen. Even without tests being widely available it would have been wise to require all arrivals to quarantine, as Taiwan has done with great success. Yeah, sure, that would have been a nuisance for quite a few people and painful for the airline industry, true, but nowhere near as annoying and painful as things have ended up now.
- MartianSquirrel 6y ago
  Long term benefits? check Good for our constituants? check Good for whoever pays for my campaign? check Oh, you say it will jeopardize my reelection? fuggetaboutit /s
netsharc 6y ago
In most countries they just want a negative test from the origin country, so the country being visited doesn't have to spend a test for the tourist. But it's not bulletproof, if someone tests false negative and flies and infects a few others. Other countries (Taiwan, NZ?) quarantine you for 14 days on arrival, and also test you...

anonunivgrad 6y ago

There's really no point. Hundreds to thousands of people are contracting covid every day in every city across America. Over the course of five days in December, there were one million new cases. People coming in on international flights is basically irrelevant. That could start to change if the vaccine causes community spread to plummet.

gibrown 6y ago

They should do it for all air travel whether international or domestic.

nostromo 6y ago

Covid testing hasn't been, and still isn't, universally available. Mexico, to pick one neighboring country with a lot of cross-border traffic and cultural ties to the US, has done 97% fewer tests than the US has, for example.

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graeme 6y ago
Do you mean per capita? If mexico did 97% less as an absolute number that would mean they test more than the US per capita.
- doubleunplussed 6y ago
  How do you figure? Mexico and the US's populations only differ by a factor of ~2, and Mexico is the smaller one.
- smnrchrds 6y ago
  Population of Mexico is 38% of the population of the US, not less than 3%.
  - graeme 6y ago
    Oops I read it backwards, as the US testing 97% more. My mistake.

cush 6y ago

> why wasn't this done as soon as travel was restarted Half our country's leadership being science deniers is a start

peytn 6y ago
I recall that the science deniers were the ones in favor of border restrictions. Besides, I don’t envy anybody whose position is so weak they must resort to finger pointing. A scientist would let the data speak.
- us0r 6y ago
  > A scientist would let the data speak. Yet many schools in the US are still closed.
  - peytn 6y ago
    It’s clear through this all that we’ve seen great power wielded. Regardless of who you support, I hope anybody reading this remembers that there are more important things than winning. The government has a monopoly on violence. It doesn’t need you that much. Our kids are the losers when we allow ourselves to be pitted against each other.
- cush 6y ago
  They based border restrictions on bigotry, not science. And the cost to wait and collect more of that data is time and corpses, so it's not so cut and dry.
  - peytn 6y ago
    I’m sorry, that just sounds like an excuse. The policy we chose was bad for almost a year. To me that’s inexcusable.
    - cush 6y ago
      An excuse for what...? What policy are you referring to?

jen20 6y ago

> The only question is why this wasn't done as soon as travel was restarted I'm not sure there was a point where travel was ever _stopped_? At least not for US citizens or residents. This is not to say the test requirement should not have been imposed (much) earlier, however!

SergeAx 6y ago

This doesn't make any sense. Requiring a test on entry to country with full-fledged epidemia is like asking for an umbrella on entrance to the swimming pool.