printUPDATE I (2/29/020): Of course the state doesn’t want the citizens to purchase face masks, hence the incessant, neurotic, total discrediting of N95 face masks. I made the logical point to my husband the other day to the effect that, while the virus is minuscule, COVID-19 is delivered in a larger medium of bodily fluids or spray. Some barrier to the medium in which it is delivered is better than none. Likewise, Dr. John Campbell, a somewhat befuddled British physician, is not prepared to dishonestly declare face-masks useless. Listen.
UPDATE II (3/4/020): It’s probably too late for us here in the US. But, but, can we at least dream of a government that looks after its nationals like Israel, imposing tough new travel restrictions on 5 European nations due to fears of corona virus? Details: “Israel severely restricts entry from Europe due to virus.”
Original Feb 29 Post:
The US has no restrictions on arrivals from some hot spots of the Corona Virus outbreak. Passenger screening from those source countries—Italy, for instance—is lackluster to put it mildly.
How do we know this? Not from Fox News, but from Bill de Blasio, the mayor of New York City.
The progressive mayor recommended that “travel restrictions … be extended to include more countries.”
“Hong Kong, Italy, Japan, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand. Anyone needs to be screened and if they have symptoms they need to be quarantined,” de Blasio said.
Who would have expected one of the most progressive officials in the country to voice such a sensibly conservative sentiment!
On the other hand, Fox News is cheering indiscriminately and unproductively for everything President Trump does, or doesn’t do, on the COVID-19 front. By so doing, the faithful at Fox are inadvertently harming Americans.
So, we arrive at a paradoxical position where a progressive like de Blasio is first to say what needs to be said!
Most liberal media are lamenting a reduction of travel from China and energetically conjuring counter-intuitive reasons as to why all travel restrictions somehow exacerbate epidemics.
The CDC and NIH officials have generally been mum on travel restrictions into the US, issuing only “travel advisories.”
That conservatives (other than Tucker Carlson) are not covering matters touching on insufficient screening at airports is shameful and counterproductive. It feeds into the distrust of Republican media.
Now, that’s the mindset of a pathologically liberal nation! The free flow of anything into the US must not be disrupted even when such promiscuous liberalism might be lethal.
Note how liberals use the same arguments to advocate against borders and against erecting barriers to disease transmission.
* Photo by Kevin Frayer/Getty Images