Earlier today, we reported on a new strain of the COVID virus that has shown up in South Africa.
Immediately after the new strain was announced, numerous countries imposed travel restrictions, quarantines, and/or bans.
Even though there is no science on the new strain yet, Joe Biden will issue travel restrictions on South Africa on Monday.
What About the Science?
This may sound like something insignificant, but it could prove to be a major political problem for Joe Biden.
Democrats politicized travel bans early on during the pandemic when Trump shut down travel from China and later Europe.
When Trump issued the bans, there was not enough data to support such a move, but Trump saw the writing on the wall and made a move to block travel in the hopes of containing the spread of COVID.
When he did that, Joe Biden was one of the first to call Trump out, saying the travel ban was xenophobic and racist in nature.
Biden has just now done the same thing.
CNBC is reporting that there will be a travel ban in place on most non-US citizens entering the United States that were recently in South Africa.
Additionally, the outlet is reporting that “Biden will also reinstate travel restrictions on the entry of non-U.S. citizens from the U.K. and Brazil, where new Covid strains have emerged. The restrictions will also apply to Ireland and much of Europe.”
It was only hours ago that Dr. Fauci stated that we should not decide on any travel restrictions until we see the data on this, which we will not have for weeks, according to researchers.
So, Joe Biden is now completely disregarding the advice of Dr. Fauci to implement this travel restriction.
However, Dr. Anne Schuchat, principal deputy director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, has backed up the move.
She stated that the agency was “putting in place this suite of measures to protect Americans and also to reduce the risk of these variants spreading and worsening the current pandemic.”
White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki added, “We plan to strengthen public health measures around international travel in order to further mitigate the spread of Covid-19.”
To be clear, this is the right move to make, but the fact that Biden was so openly against Trump doing it just shows the hypocrisy and idiocy of Biden’s statements during the campaign.
The next time Joe Biden steps up to the podium, every question he faces should be on this new policy and his comments when Trump did the very same thing.
Source: CNBC
