Omicron question of the day: What is the point of travel restrictions?

by philg

Following up on Omicron Question of the Day: What good is PCR testing that takes 2-3 days for a result? …

A repeat of an earlier question asked here: What is the point of our travel restrictions?

Knowing that current testing technology will flag perhaps at most half of those who are infected with SARS-CoV-2, we insist that people can’t come to the U.S. from abroad unless they’ve tested negative. This means that we’ve slightly cut the number of people who arrive into a country with 108,000+ “new cases” per day among those who are already here. NYT:

Our restrictions on documented travelers have proven useless in preventing a new variant from arriving in the U.S. and then spreading (see “Before Even Receiving a Name, Omicron Could Have Spread in New York and the Country” (NYT, 12/5)). The undocumented, of course, continue to cross the southern border without going through the testing and vaccine papers checks.

It would seem that we’ve had sufficient data to declare failure. If we want to keep people with COVID-19 out of the U.S. we have to close the borders to the documented and also somehow close the southern border to the undocumented. Or we could decide that, for whatever reason, we need open borders and we won’t bother hassling the documented travelers with demands for medical test results. But the current system seems irrational (especially closing the borders to people coming from certain African countries because we say that they’re likely to have a variant of COVID that is already in the U.S. and Europe and spreading in both places).

I know that we are #FollowingTheScience so obviously there is something I’m missing… but what is the explanation for keeping the current system after we have direct evidence of failure? The current system can’t be denting the number of infected people in the U.S. because there aren’t all that many documented travelers showing up compared to the 108,000+ daily positive tests here. The current system can’t be discouraging participation in the global COVID variant pool because the Omicron variant was first reported to WHO on November 24 with a first sample dated Nov. 9; it arrived in the U.S. no later than November 22 (CDC).

In case the testing hassles are discouraging you from going to Italy, a recent photo from Naples, Florida:

A friend just returned from Europe with the following report:

No Americans anywhere! … Rental cars in Italy were practically free as were hotels. Italians and Germans seem to have accepted their permanent masked fates with zero drama. They tend to wear inside and out, all ages. Everyone thinks Sweden is nuts and that the world has ended in America. Most I met with think the travel restrictions to the US are insane.

Rapid testing is everywhere, although on way home no one at any airport asked to see my test result, just vax status.

The systems in the EU all were digitally linked so a scan of their vax cards loads everything up everywhere. They thought my vax card was fake.

Related:

11 thoughts on “Omicron question of the day: What is the point of travel restrictions?”

  1. I guess we keep the current system because there are no better ideas that don’t embarrass the current bureaucracy? Just in the process of weaving my way through apps and webpages for a trip (and hopeful return, otherwise it’s gonna be a Zoom Christmas!) to Canada, and found the *new* testing requirements for coming into the US – https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/travelers/testing-international-air-travelers.html. Key excerpt:

    “All air passengers 2 years or older with a flight departing to the US from a foreign country at or after 12:01am EST (5:01am GMT) on December 6, 2021, are required show a negative COVID-19 viral test result taken no more than 1 day before travel, or documentation of having recovered from COVID-19 in the past 90 days, before they board their flight.”

    2 years old? And I’ve been vaccinated and boosted, but still have to be tested?

    • As the saying goes, “You comply because you want it to end; because you comply, it doesn’t end.”

    • Yes. And re-boosted whenever they say so. Might have been better to say no to it all eh? At least the pureblood unvaxxed stay unvaxxed. The vaxxed move in and out of vaxxed status based on the whims of bureaucrats and what jurisdiction they happen to be in at the moment. None of this was hard to see from the very beginning.

  2. Q: What is the point of travel restrictions?

    A: Bureaucrats failing upwards. Also, “if it saves just one life…”

  3. You’ve got to stop this thing where you try to use your brain to figure things out. I know I’ve given up.

    As I said a few minutes ago to a friend regarding the potential COVID-stopping benefits of Sea Lettuce:

    “The way things are going, someone is going to declare Jelly Donuts made with Sea Lettuce Ulvan Extract and infused with THC potentially protective against COVID. Private Pyle will be posthumously exonerated. You don’t understand fear of COVID and you don’t understand Clown World #Science, because you don’t live in Maskachusetts. What do you want to do, study something hard like computational fluid dynamics for the rest of your life, toiling away in front of a computer and trying to tack on homebrew whimwhams to your car to save a few pennies per mile in MPG? F*** that stuff, buy 10 tons of sea lettuce, do what Shaklee Vitamins does, and retire.”

    https://us.shaklee.com/Nutrition/Targeted-Solutions/Aging-Well/Vivix%C2%AE/p/b-viv

    > I know that we are #FollowingTheScience so obviously there is something I’m missing… but what is the explanation for keeping the current system after we have direct evidence of failure? The current system can’t be denting the number of infected people in the U.S. because there aren’t all that many documented travelers showing up compared to the 108,000+ daily positive tests here.

    You are wearing yourself out, beating your brain to death chasing all the loose ends. Stop trying to use Reason, Philip. You were educated at what used to be a really good school that doesn’t exist any more, and you need to get with the Clown World program. Shaklee sells that for $103 a bottle and doesn’t even tell you how big a bottle is while recommending you consume 1 teaspoon a day. We’re past the point of No Return. We’re in the Neverland.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neverland

    Science is a political process. Forever and ever now.

    • Wait, I stand corrected. I found the link to the product labels. For $103 retail you get 5.1 ounces of dietary supplement that may reduce telomere shortening. That’s $2,585.09 per gallon. It’s also about a 1 month supply for $103, or $1,236 dollars a year! So you use about 1/2 gallon a year, as directed.

      I think we should stop questioning things and get with the program – everyone else with half a brain is! They’re getting rich, we’re sitting here for hours a day noodling away debating travel bans. It’s useless. SARS-CoV-2 is an endemic virus, people are terrified of it, and we’ve got millions of mouths and minds to serve and calm. It’s a service.

    • My feeling is that donuts infused with Ulvan Extract and THC are a win-win-win. People love donuts. People love being protected from COVID. And THC makes you want to sit on the couch and do nothing all day long but watch the Tube. So you might be making people fatter, but you’re potentially protecting them against COVID, and they won’t want to go anywhere, hence they won’t travel as much, go outside and potentially spread the virus, which makes travel bans less onerous. Then all we have to do is make sure they’ve got their latest variant booster shots and we’re on the way to the New Normal.

      Admit defeat and adjust.

  4. We will eradicate COVID, I men COVIDFear and all the variant that come with it just like we have eradicated poverty, war on drugs’, no child left behind, et. al. Except that, if and when we eradicate COVID and declare victory, historian will call it one of the biggest manmade blunders of all times. A blunder, unlike anything, that impacted the whole planet and very much all humans on it.

Comments are closed.