As far as I was aware the US government issued a travel ban on China while the WHO was still wrongly claiming travel bans are ineffective.

Source: https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/01/30/275959/the-china...

"Tedros, as he is called, said the WHO does not recommend limiting either trade or travel to China at this time. “In fact, we oppose it,” he said. The health organization said it would question border closures, quarantining of airplane passengers who aren’t ill, and similar steps."

This organization is either totally incompetent or complicit with spreading CCP propaganda. In fact, they reacted significantly slower than the US government.

Travel bans are not effective unless they can be strict and from everywhere. Like, if you are a small island country that can keep everyone out or do strict quarantine, sure. But the travel ban on China was just theatrics and "microbial theatre" as is evidenced by, uh, reality.

Italy was one of the first countries to issue a travel ban on Chinese travelers.

South Korea never issued a travel ban.

In order for a travel ban to be effective, it has to be for all incoming travelers. Not just for a specific country.

>In order for a travel ban to be effective, it has to be for all incoming travelers. Not just for a specific country.

This is not true. A ban on a specific country cannot eliminate the risk but it can still slow the spread just like any mitigation.

there are plenty of ways to slow the spread that doesn't unnecessarily break up families, keep people away from their jobs, create job loss, keep people stranded, and harbor poor goodwill towards another country. the travel ban has uprooted lives, and now here we are, and the u.s. government is still phoning this in. the travel ban against china was a pointless exercise in political posturing and akin to a clam's defense strategy. it isn't a big surprise that the virus still got here, primarily from europe, and we weren't even aware of it because the u.s. wasn't testing nor were they tracking, the two things that have time and time again shown to be extremely effective.

there are plenty of models that quarantining the source only does not work. china even proved this. the initial quarantine of wuhan only was not working, so they had to expand it to everywhere. south korea showed testing and tracking worked better than shutting down travel.

the u.s. travel ban against china was ineffective. however, it will now continue indefinitely because the u.s. is in the middle of a shit show, and this will continue to harm people and businesses affected by the travel ban. it will add months if not years of delays to visa processing everywhere.

I'd be on board defunding the fed gov as well!