Travelers in China. Fox News/AP.
The United States will again require negative Coronavirus test results for travelers from China. Fox News. The ruling comes after China has removed their Zero Covid restrictions that imposed lockdowns much more severe than what happened in the United States. It is unclear what is happening in China after they lifted most of their restrictions as China has not been sharing data. Some estimate that China could have had as many as 250 million cases in the three weeks since they dropped Zero Covid. The CDC will also increase their efforts to sequence the genome of any Coronavirus samples from Chinese travelers to try and detect any new variants.
My Comment:
This is starting to make me nervous, but not for the reason you think. I have no real fear of the Coronavirus anymore. It's not worse than the flu at this point and I have gotten that enough times that I'm not worried about getting it again. Plus the Coronavirus is now a lot less deadly then it was when it first came onto the scene almost three years ago, it's now equivalent to a bad cold or a weak flu for the vast majority of people. And the vast majority of Americans now have natural antibodies against the virus.
So why would I be worried about this? Because it could be the excuse Biden needs to put us all back under lockdown and masks again. I think Biden wants to do this and would if he could as it would excuse the current bad economy. After all, if the economy tanks after lockdowns all Biden has to do is throw up his hands and say "nothing I can do". Nobody wants to go back to lockdown here in the United States and as far as we are concerned the pandemic is over.
I am not concerned about new variant of the virus coming out. As I have said before it would be extremely unlikely for a new variant to be deadlier than the forms that are out there now. The exact opposite usually happens. Viruses tend to get weaker over time and that certainly has been the case with the Coronavirus.
It is clear that we don't know exactly what is going on in China. They aren't really cooperating with international authorities anymore and we really have no idea how many people are getting sick and dying with the Coronavirus right now.
Are things bad there? Probably not. Like I said, the virus is not anywhere near as deadly as it once was. It can still kill people, but most of those people will be the ones that are on the way out anyways. Just like the flu, there will be unlucky people dying because of the virus.
There are probably problems going on in China though. China is the closest thing to a "virgin" population for the virus. I never really believed the numbers from China so I think more people have partial immunity than people think, but if there is anywhere where people haven't been exposed to the virus it's probably China. With no natural immunity and China's vaccines being crap, there could be a few people getting very sick.
Still, I think this is more about China trying to save face yet again. They can't admit that Zero Covid was the wrong move so they are trying to downplay new cases and deaths. That doesn't mean that there is a huge number of deaths being covered up but it does mean that they aren't telling the truth about what they are doing.
With all that being said, is it worth it to bring back testing for people from China? Probably not. Like I said, I am not afraid of new variants and it's not like the virus isn't still around here in the first place. The Coronavirus is never going away and we can't keep asking like it's not just another virus at this point. We have no reason to waste resources on testing, though I suppose it's China that is going to bear the cost.
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