The United States will ban travel from India on May 4th due to the Coronavirus pandemic.

 

A mass cremation in India. CNBC.

The Biden Administration will ban travel from India on May 4th due to the Coronavirus Pandemic. CNBC. Cases and deaths in the United States have been declining thanks to vaccines, but India has been dealing with a massive 2nd wave of the virus. India has had an average of 375,000 cases and 3000 deaths in the past few weeks, and experts thing those numbers are undercounted. Some fear that the severity of the outbreak is due to a new strain found in India, but that strain is already in the United States. The ban won't stop flights from India, but will stop non-citizens and non-resident aliens from flying. 

My Comment:

Kinda wondering what the point of this is. If the feared India variant of the Coronavirus is already hear, why stop travel? And I don't know if the Indian variant is even something we have to worry about. There isn't any consensus yet on if the virus is more dangerous but my guess is that it is not. 

Will banning travel from India help otherwise though? It might help a little. There could be some people that could infect American citizens and that could cause some problems. But is it worth it to ban all people from India? 

But the problem is that the justification of banning people from India falls apart when there are still flights going to and from the country. Citizens and resident aliens can still come and they can still carry the virus. Plus I think Indian citizens can just catch a flight from a country that does not have restrictions. 

I also think that India's problems are mostly related to being India. If we had the same strain they do we would not be having the problems they are having. Like I said in my post yesterday, I think the problem for India is poor hygiene, crowded conditions, a lack of vaccinations and the fact that the 1st wave there was very minor. 

None of those are really true for the United States. We are pretty hygienic and not anywhere nearly as crowded as India. We have done a much better job of vaccinating our people as well. But the biggest problem for another wave here is the fact that many people here have had the virus. I just don't think there are enough people left that either haven't caught the virus already or haven't been vaccinated for a major new wave of infections. 

So was this the right call by the Biden Administration? I honestly think that it is mostly pointless. It might stop a few cases so it might be worth it. But it's a drop in the bucket for the problem we already have and I doubt it will accomplish much. I don't oppose the action, I just don't think it will do much.

I do have to say that I never would have thought that Joe Biden would make this decision. The Obama administration never stopped travel during the big Ebola outbreak back in 2014 to 2016 and the Democrats were furious with President Trump when he canceled travel to China. The fact that a Democrat can actually take this action marks a big change from what the Democrats were saying just a few years ago.