A day earlier, Democratic Rep. Ami Bera, who presided over the hearing, told Politico, “In our response we can’t create prejudices and harbor anxieties toward one population.” Bera told Politico the decision to impose travel restrictions “probably doesn’t make sense” given that the outbreak had already spread to several other countries by that point. “At this juncture, it’s going to be very hard to contain the virus,” Bera said.
But the Democratic leaders in Congress have simply not mentioned Trump’s travel restrictions.
In a Feb. 25 tweet, Trump claimed that Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer “didn’t like my early travel closings.” Trump’s comment appears to be based on a fabricated tweet that circulated widely on Facebook.
Schumer has been critical of the Trump administration’s response to the spread of the novel coronavirus. But he hasn’t mentioned the travel restrictions in that criticism.
In Trump’s Fox News interview on March 4, host Sean Hannity said former vice president and current Democratic challenger Joe Biden “accused the president of being xenophobic, while he was trying to protect the health of the American people.”
On the day Trump imposed the travel restrictions, Biden did criticize Trump for his “record of hysteria and xenophobia,” but it is unclear whether Biden was referring to Trump’s travel restrictions, or Trump’s overall qualifications to deal with the epidemic.
“We have right now a crisis with the coronavirus, emanating from China,” Biden said on Jan. 31 at a campaign event in Iowa. “A national emergency worldwide alerts. The American people need to have a president who they can trust what he says about it, that he is going to act rationally about it. In moments like this, this is where the credibility of the president is most needed, as he explains what we should and should not do. This is no time for Donald Trump’s record of hysteria and xenophobia – hysterical xenophobia – and fearmongering to lead the way instead of science.”
In an op-ed published several days prior in USA Today, Biden similarly argued: “The possibility of a pandemic is a challenge Donald Trump is unqualified to handle as president.” Biden wrote that he recalled “how Trump sought to stoke fear and stigma during the 2014 Ebola epidemic.” Trump, Biden wrote, “railed against the evidence-based response our administration put in place — which quelled the crisis and saved hundreds of thousands of lives — in favor of reactionary travel bans that would only have made things worse.”
Although Democratic leaders and Democratic presidential candidates have been highly critical of Trump’s response to the coronavirus, we couldn’t find any examples of them directly and clearly criticizing the travel restrictions.
In a Feb. 4 letter to Trump, Democratic Reps. Nita Lowey, chair of the Appropriations Committee, and Rose DeLauro, chair of one of the subcommittees, wrote that they “strongly support” the president’s decision to declare a public health emergency in response to the novel coronavirus outbreak, and they specifically cited the administration’s actions to impose “significant travel restrictions.”
Trump said his “bold” decision has since been vindicated, that it has “saved a lot of lives” and that because of his decision “that’s why we have a very small number of people that we have to really worry about.”
At a press conference on Feb. 29 attended by Trump, Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, praised “the original decision that was made by the president” to impose travel restrictions to and from China.
“We prevented travel from China to the United States,” said Fauci, who has worked for multiple administrations. “If we had not done that, we would have had many, many more cases right here that we would have to be dealing with.”
But not everyone agrees.
Nuzzo, the senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, said there’s no evidence, at least, that the travel restrictions have saved lives or reduced the number of cases in the U.S.
“We have not seen any evidence that shows the travel restrictions stopped or slowed down transmission of the virus that causes COVID-19,” Nuzzo told us via email. “It is possible that it did, but there is no evidence to show this. Rather there are a number of reasons to believe that this may very well not be the case.”
Chiefly, she said, that’s because “we weren’t seriously looking for cases in the US.”
“If you had mild infection, you were not tested,” Nuzzo said. “If you had viral pneumonia not requiring oxygen but had not been to Wuhan, you wouldn’t have been tested.”
“Prior to the US travel restrictions, China began suspending outbound flights,” Nuzzo said. “Airlines also began canceling flights due to low travel volume. Then, the US implemented travel restrictions, which further reduced travel from China. The exception was Americans who were returning home from China. These folks were subject to quarantine upon return. A number of cases were found among these individuals. If you only test travelers from China and you greatly reduce the number of travelers coming from China, then you would be likely to not find many cases.
“But it doesn’t mean the virus hadn’t entered the US prior to travel restrictions,” Nuzzo said, as data now suggests occurred in Washington state.
Also, she said other countries, including Japan, Singapore and Korea, had a significant number of coronavirus cases, but they weren’t subject to travel restrictions. The U.S. “would likely not have picked it up” if travelers coming to the U.S. from those countries “because we weren’t using these other countries as criteria for testing.”
A modeling study published in Science magazine on March 6, “The effect of travel restrictions on the spread of the 2019 novel coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak,” concluded that, “In areas affected by the 2019 novel coronavirus (COVID-19), travel restrictions will only modestly impact the spread of the outbreak,” according to a press release for the study.
“Based on the study’s results, the authors say the greatest benefit to mitigating the epidemic will come from public health interventions and behavioral changes that achieve a considerable reduction in the disease transmissibility – factors like early detection, isolation, and handwashing,” according to the press release.
The authors concluded that travel restrictions introduced by the Chinese government in Wuhan in Jan. 23 and the halting of airline flights to and from China starting in early February at first slowed the spread of the disease to the rest of the world. Even still, a large number of individuals exposed to the virus had been traveling internationally without being detected and, the authors note, the number of imported cases around the world went up in a matter of weeks.
“Moving forward we expect that travel restrictions to COVID-19 affected areas will have modest effects, and that transmission-reduction interventions will provide the greatest benefit to mitigate the epidemic,” the authors wrote.
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