What? There's no travel ban between the UK and Europe, the fantasy in your head notwithstanding.
No, but neither is the UK signatory to a treaty prohibiting border checks with other European countries.
You understand all I have to do as a European to get into the US is fly via Heathrow, right? Independent of the fact the UK has the same rate of infection as Europe.
The information I have suggests that the UK's infection rate is well below most Schengen countries...
Coronavirus Update (Live)
Trump could have...
- Addressed the shortage of tests
"Additionally, last week, I signed into law an $8.3 billion funding bill to help C.D.C. and other government agencies fight the virus and support vaccines, treatments and distribution of medical supplies. Testing and testing capabilities are expanding rapidly, day by day. We are moving very quickly."
- Created a national set of guidelines for closures of schools, events, and other gatherings
A one-size-fits-all set of guide of guidelines wouldn't have been appropriate, because status of the epidemic varies widely in different parts of the country.
- Provided any sort of recent projections on the infection rate
- Provided any sort of timeline on vaccines/treatments
- Provided any sort of timeline on how long daily changes will last (you know... LEADING?!)
Perhaps we lack the information to provide those, especially considering how many unknown factors there still are. Not to mention that if the President did provide those and they weren't 100% accurate, you'd call him incompetent for it.
You are operating from a false premise. You are pretending as if travel bans are the best way to stop the spread of disease as opposed to widespread testing, containment of infected, and having a staff that was out in front of this beforehand.
Travel bans are a means of containing the infected, in fact one of the most important ways.
The main reason why the US has been so behind is that it disband and/or underfunded the very people that would make the US response to this. The apologism for mediocrity is a sad state of affairs and the current president's followers.
The US hasn't been behind. On the contrary, the epidemic has not his the US as hard as it has most of the rest of the industrialized world, and that was in large part due to the ban on travel from China. This is why it was necessary to extend the travel ban to most European countries. As the President pointed out:
"Our team is the best anywhere in the world. At the very start of the outbreak, we instituted sweeping travel restrictions on China and put in place the first federally mandated quarantine in over 50 years. We declared a public health emergency and issued the highest level of travel warning on other countries as the virus spread its horrible infection.
And taking early intense action, we have seen dramatically fewer cases of the virus in the United States than are now present in Europe.
The European Union failed to take the same precautions and restrict travel from China and other hot spots. As a result, a large number of new clusters in the United States were seeded by travelers from Europe."
The UK has a greater number of infected people than a half dozen European countries. In health terms, in epidemiological terms, it makes absolutely no sense.
That's a small minority of European countries, and are you including non-Schengen countries?
Not only that, I understand that South Korea is not included in Trump’s travel bans.
You know, the country with thousands of known infections...!!
"At the same time, we are monitoring the situation in China and in South Korea."
People have been flying from Milan into the UK and experiencing absolutely no checks or testing. The UK government response to the crisis is basically non-existent which is why we're about 1-2 weeks away from a national meltdown when our already over-strained NHS is faced with a massive surge in intake.
Then perhaps the UK's infection rate will catch up with the rest of Western Europe and the travel ban will be extended to the UK.
He didn't mentioned the problem of testing in the US. South Korea tests 10,000 a day. The US hasn't even tested 10,000 people yet. And both countries had their first cases about the same time.
It is a pathetic response from the US.
Which country has a higher infection rate, the US or Korea? That's already been addressed on this thread hasn't it? The contradictory nature of all this criticism of the administration is showing itself. Because it isn't really about the virus at all, it's about trying to score political points against the President for the November election, and exploiting whatever can be exploited to do so.