I have no such obligation nor a strong opinion. The author of the article said they don’t work. The burden you state is on them, not me. The passage you quoted had an “if” in front of it on purpose.
> If travel restrictions are good on a risk adjusted basis to buy time for the “weeks” of analysis needed that could help with further reducing risk, let’s talk about it not write it off as “not working” which is non-sensical.
The unstated alternative to writing it off as not working is just enforcing bans on the basis of “better safe than sorry”. To me it’s clear that experience with the other variants shows that it just isn’t safe, so there is no “better safe than sorry”.
Let’s talk about not just writing off the alternative as well.
> to buy time for the “weeks” of analysis needed that could help with further reducing risk,
We’re not going to learn anything useful in the few weeks bought by stopping these flights.
And remember, even though the general public insists on these bans, international law proscribes no country can prevent its own citizens from returning home, so no ban can be absolute.