oops,
... i guess that a left wing rag too, now
On Saturday, Italy announced that 793 people had died that day from COVID-19, the coronavirus that originated in China that has rapidly spread across the world. That was up from 627 deaths that had occurred on Friday and 427 on Thursday. The death toll is now well over 5,000 in that country alone.
www.washingtontimes.com
That the Trump administration “banned flights,” “closed the borders,” or “stopped flights” from first China and later the European Union to halt the spread of COVID-19 has become a staple of its defense of its response to the pandemic. But it simply isn’t true. At no time through the course of this awful period have flights even once been halted between either China and the U.S. or Europe — including even Italy — and the United States.
The Trump administration did impose travel restrictions between China and the U.S., and later Europe and the U.S., but both actions have loopholes large enough to fly a 777 through. In the case of China, on Jan. 31 — weeks after it was known that the coronavirus was a serious problem — the administration restricted travel for “foreign nationals who had been in China in the last 14 days.
That means that Americans — just as capable as carrying and transmitting a contagious viral infection as foreigners — had free passage between China and the U.S. And so daily flights between China and the U.S. continued. (And yes, even these limited restrictions were slammed as being too punitive at the time.)
The Trump administration’s alleged Europe travel ban, announced to much fanfare earlier this month, is similarly weak. It too exempts Americans from any restrictions whatsoever, and the screening that returning Americans have been subjected to at airports has been laughably weak. Passengers have been given a form to fill out (which many travelers have reported aren’t even being collected), waved through immigration, and then simply urged to self-quarantine. It’s like the honor system, but for containing a deadly pandemic.
www.vox.com
www.theguardian.com
www.bostonherald.com
www.rawstory.com
