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Originally Posted by freebeard
Around half a million Chinese people, some of them infected with coronavirus, entered America from December to February at the height of the COVID-19 outbreak, new figures show
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It is sad that we are still using the same xenophobic logic from pandemics of the past. It doesn't matter how many Chinese people entered the USA. What matters is that people of any national origin entered the US from infected areas. Americans citizens get the virus and spread it just like Chinese citizens.
I just finished reading "Black Death at the Golden Gate" which covers the Plague epidemic in San Francisco around 1900. We did the same thing then, set up a quarantine zone but it only applied to Chinese. Whites within the zone were allowed to leave and return home and took the plague with them. This was based on racist logic that white people couldn't get plague because it was a Chinese disease caused by their inferior genetics, dirty living habits and unusual food.
120 years later we are doing the same thing.
Quote:
Originally Posted by freebeard
This number of people were pouring into the U.S. while the World Health Organization was simultaneously insisting that no country should enforce any kind of border controls to stop the spread of the virus.
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The WHO recommend countries test and quarantine infected people and anyone they had contact with instead of implement travel bans. It is the same method that Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan have used to limit spread of the virus. However, that method required tests that we didn't have and social restrictions we are still not willing to make.
Quote:
Originally Posted by freebeard
President Donald Trump restricted travel from China from February 2nd onwards, but that was too little too late because the outbreak (which was subsequently covered up by China for two months) had started in Wuhan in November, according to Johns Hopkins University.
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Yes it was too little because we never actually stopped travel from China. We banned foreign nationals who had visited China from entering the USA. Again, this assumes that foreign carry the virus but Americans don't. We continued to allow Americans to travel to China and return to the USA. We didn't quarantine them, we just told them to self-quarantine and then took no steps to insure compliance.
From today's New York Times:
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430,000 People Have Traveled From China to U.S. Since Coronavirus Surfaced
There were 1,300 direct flights to 17 cities before President Trump’s travel restrictions. Since then, nearly 40,000 Americans and other authorized travelers have made the trip, some this past week and many with spotty screening.
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We are STILL allowing Americans to return from virus hot spots without quarantine.