In recent weeks, community transmission of Covid-19 in a number of East Asian countries has fallen to very low levels, virtually zero in some cases. Meanwhile, the US records 20,000 to 30,000 new cases every single day. That suggests a travel ban might be appropriate, preventing Americans from visiting East Asia. But what about a travel ban on visitors to America from East Asia? That would be more than pointless, almost a gratuitous insult. But then the desire to show good manners has never stopped the US government from acting like a jerk:
Steven Mnuchin, the US Treasury secretary, said that it was “too hard to tell” if the US will loosen international travel restrictions affecting Asia and Europe this year, even as measures limiting domestic economic activity are lifted.
Perhaps the following analogy would help to drive home the point. Consider the guy who lives in this filthy place:
Now suppose the owner of that house remarked to you that he didn’t want Marie Kondo visiting his place because she was too messy; she might track in dirt:
Yes, I’m exaggerating, but not all that much. Sometime you need to use an extreme example to drive home the actual insanity of government policies. These policy directives are issued by very serious, sober people like Steve Mnuchin, dressed in business suits. They represent the awesome power of the federal government. It’s natural to want to show some deference to top US policymakers. And we always need to keep in mind “Chesterton’s fence“.
Nonetheless, there are policies that are so crazy, so offensive, that it’s difficult for me to hold back. This is one of them.
America needs to look in the mirror.
PS. Mnuchin added:
But this is a great time for people to explore America.
Actually, it’s a dangerous time to explore America; it’s a great time to explore East Asia (if you can get in.)
READER COMMENTS
JK Brown
May 5 2020 at 2:09pm
Well, given that the early super spreader events (SSE) were centered on “high society” events: social, work, religious group events, it seems odd to be pushing to reopen international travel based on reports that cases that rise to the level of confirmation via testing have declined in some areas. That still leaves the asymptomatic.
And you skipped overt the restrictions on those traveling into the East Asian countries after visit, well, just about anywhere else. And for what if they come the US, to sit in a hotel, unable to go to at beach or avoid physically being socially distanced by the NYPD?
Quite frankly, given the primary spreader trait of international travelers, it should be a long time before restrictions on foreign travel are lifted. The media is just waiting to cast blame when a state’s new cases increase and re-opening international travel can be linked to being proximate.
From these SSEs, a pattern emerges of prolonged, close-range, face-to-face conversation, along with group singing/yelling, embraces and communal food as the virus attack vectors. This implicates conferences, bars, meetings, most of urban socializing, and the “college experience” on campus (possibly even classroom time)
Scott Sumner
May 5 2020 at 4:35pm
JK, The problem with your argument is that we do allow travelers from some countries. These decisions are not being made by science, but rather by politics.
When the bans were first imposed they were supposed to be based on hard science. Now that’s all gone out the window, and it’s just crude nationalism.
If we allowed flights from China, the inflow of visitors would reduce the rate of infection per capita in the US, and help our economy. A win-win.
Dustin
May 6 2020 at 3:12pm
You seem to be extending your argument based on information not present in the article. What countries, specifically:
Aren’t currently restricted and should remain unrestricted
Aren’t currently restricted but should be
Are currently restricted but shouldn’t be
Are currently restricted and should remain restricted
Also, “per capita” is irrelevant aside from assessing response effectiveness or straight up jingoistic nationalism. Absolute amount of human suffering is what matters; artificially reducing the per capita infections in the US would be meaningless, though perhaps you meant this to be tongue-in-cheek. Besides, they’d just become infected anyway, and with greater population density due to inbound travel, they’d also increase the domestic rate of transmission as well as viral export.
IMO a sub-optimal policy of travel restriction during a pandemic is better than none at all.
Henri Hein
May 5 2020 at 2:23pm
“Chesterson’s Fence” looks like a link, but it isn’t acting like one. There is a good description here.
Scott Sumner
May 5 2020 at 4:36pm
Sorry, I added a link.
Phil H
May 5 2020 at 3:21pm
We were talking the other night about what’s going to happen when we have great fractures of virological incompatibility across the world: If Europe and the US essentially have covid endemic, then will East Asia end up with closed borders to that part of the world indefinitely? It seems inconceivable, but hey, video phones are pretty good now. Perhaps we just don’t need as much travel back and forth.
John Alcorn
May 5 2020 at 4:00pm
Phil H,
Robin Hanson outlines scenarios of international blocs based on prevalence of the virus. See his blogpost (May 2), The Plan A Winner’s Circle Alliance. Here are excerpts:
Scott Sumner
May 5 2020 at 4:38pm
Very good analysis by Robin.
Rebes
May 5 2020 at 4:11pm
Brilliant post.
Philo
May 5 2020 at 5:03pm
You are fond of this remark: ‘America needs to look in the mirror.’ But I think you are over-straining the metaphor of ‘collective action’. There is not really a collective agent here, with collective beliefs and desires, making collective decisions and experiencing collective emotions, such as shame. There is just an enormously clumsy piece of social machinery; too bad it doesn’t work better!
Scott Sumner
May 6 2020 at 1:42pm
OK, “Americans need”.
P Burgos
May 5 2020 at 8:19pm
It would matter symbolically to not close the border to East Asian countries, but would it matter pragmatically? I am pretty sure that any citizens of those nations would have to quarantine upon returning to the Far East, and they may not even be able to return (just look at how China is trying to keep citizens living abroad from returning).
Scott Sumner
May 6 2020 at 1:42pm
Then it’s bad symbolism to ban travel.
eric mcfadden
May 6 2020 at 2:33am
Hello,
American living here in Japan. P.E. teacher, born and raised in Colorado. I assure you that the Japanese are freaking out as well and ordering all sorts of crazy government directives and choking society. I’m not sure what you guys read on the news about “East Asia” as if that were one place.
I did have to deal with some Japanese people I know asking me about a field hospital set up in Central Park to deal with all the dead and dying in New York. Oh my goodness, i must not be keeping up with events in America. An article in the Atlantic showed it just to be some lunatic bunch in the park. I then had to show my Japanese friends a google translation for “attention seeking fringe group”.
Check it out, i promise it’s a sinking ship of cowardice here too.
Scott Sumner
May 6 2020 at 1:41pm
Yes, I’m well aware that similar problems exist elsewhere.
Mark Z
May 6 2020 at 9:00am
Scott, even if country B has a much higher infection prevalence than country A, travel from country A to country B can still make things worse for residents of country B. An analogy: If I interact with 5 people today, 2 of whom are infected, then tomorrow we add 5 more people, only one of whom is infected, meaning I interact with 10 people, 3 of whom are infected, on which day is my chance of being infected higher? It isn’t the fraction of people I interact with who are infected that determines my likelihood of getting infected, but the total number. To the extent travel from abroad increases the total number of interactions rather than merely displacing other interactions, it can absolutely make things worse even in a host country with a higher infection rate than the visitors’ country.
You seem to be assuming that it works like osmosis, which I don’t think is warranted. Even a clean visitor can make even a dirty home dirtier, so I don’t think it’s irrational if, the dirtier your home is, the fewer visitors you want, even if they’re ‘cleaner‘ than you. This doesn’t vindicate travel bans to East Asia specifically and travel bans may be ineffective for other reasons, but I don’t think it’s hypocritical or insulting for a country to ban travel from countries with a lower prevalence.
Scott Sumner
May 6 2020 at 1:40pm
The why wasn’t travel with Europe banned at the same time as travel with China? Why wasn’t travel with all countries banned? This doesn’t make any sense from a scientific perspective, it’s simply politics.
Your argument also suggests that the guy in the messy house is wise to ban Marie Kondo from entering, as she might bring in a few tiny specks of dirt. And yet’s it’s obviously silly. You need to think about the relative magnitudes, not just the general principle.
Mark Z
May 6 2020 at 6:21pm
That’s why I said it doesn’t vindicate specifically banning travel from East Asia. Why travel was first banned from China and then Europe later, I guess because the response to the pandemic is reliably about 2-3 months behind the pandemic itself. And if we’re concerned about hospital capacity, then the dirtier our metaphorical house, the more cautious we would be about letting anyone in. If anything, a country in which the virus is more under control has less to worry about from the same absolute risk than a country that’s closer to the threshold. So, the higher a country’s prevalence (and the closer it is to running out of hospital capacity), the lower the optimal prevalence threshold for banning travel from foreign countries. Now, it’s possible that the optimal threshold is so high that it’s not even beneficial to ban travel from Italy or Spain, but I still don’t see why that threshold should go up the more people we have infected in our own country.
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