Donald Trump is quick to point to his China travel restrictions as evidence that he acted early and effectively to curb the spread of coronavirus within the United States.
But the facts show that Trump’s travel restrictions are nothing but smoke and mirrors. Contrary to what he claims, he didn’t act early, didn’t stop travel and didn’t follow the advice of public health officials.
DEBUNK: Trump Acted Much Later Than He Claims
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The Trump administration didn’t announce travel restrictions from China until January 29th despite knowing that the coronavirus posed a serious threat to the public by January 3, 2020. For the 14 days prior to the restrictions, Trump expressed concern about upsetting Chinese leader Xi Jinping.
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It took more than a week from when the National Security Council recommended restricting travel to China for Trump to actually act on it.
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By the time Trump announced the travel restrictions, more than 40 countries had already restricted travel from China — but that didn’t stop him from lying that he was the first to do so.
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381,000 passengers had entered the United States on direct flights from China in January alone — before the restrictions were enacted and after coronavirus had emerged.
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Before the restrictions, there were over 1,300 direct flights from China to 17 cities in the United States in January.
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4,000 people had flown to the United States directly from Wuhan, China before health screenings began in New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco in mid-January.
DEBUNK: Trump’s Travel Restrictions Didn’t Actually Stop Travel From China, Didn’t Properly Screen Passengers
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Trump’s so-called travel ban allowed tens of thousands of people to continue entering the United States from China even after it went into effect.
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In just the two months since Trump imposed travel restrictions, nearly 40,000 people have arrived in the United States and 279 flights from China have landed in America.
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Trump’s restrictions did not apply to flights from Hong Kong or Macau.
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Loopholes included in the eleven exemptions to Trump’s travel restrictions meant that American citizens only made up 40% of the people on direct flights from China during the month of February.
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Travellers who have flown to the US from China have encountered inadequate screening processes. Reports indicate that travellers are not being adequately questioned upon arrival, and many have said they did not even have their temperature checked.
DEBUNK: Public Health Officials Dispute the Effectiveness of Trump’s Travel Ban
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Catherine Worsnop, a global health specialist at the University of Maryland, warned that a travel ban would have “limited effectiveness”: “The bans were put in place after many people had already left Wuhan and other cities, so it had already had a chance to spread.”
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Global Health Security Professor Adam Kamradt-Scott said: “These types of measures have been shown to be ineffective at halting the spread of the viruses.”
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Georgetown Law professor of global health law Lawrence Gostin said of China’s travel ban: “I think it’s a very significant mistake, and it will be counterproductive from a public health point of view.”
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The World Health Organization advised against travel restrictions to control the spread of coronavirus. WHO Spokesperson Tarik Jašarević: “Although travel restrictions may intuitively seem like the right thing to do, this is not something that WHO usually recommends.”
For a detailed timeline of how the Trump administration mismanaged travel restrictions from China, click HERE.