COVID-19 required more than a Travel Ban

Trump banned travel from China back on January 31st, 2020. I’m struggling with how to rant about that, given I don’t want a 10-page article here. I could talk about how Democrats didn’t actually disagree with it (unlike what Trump asserts). I could go on about how experts didn’t disagree with it either. And I could carry on about how that ban didn’t help as much as Trump claims. How about this: I’ll let https://www.factcheck.org/2020/03/the-facts-on-trumps-travel-restrictions/ do that better than I could for those things.

Instead, I’ll bring up two points. One, banning travel from China is not the end-all solution Trump makes it out to be. And, two, that the ban was an obvious progression in any case.

What I mean by “end-all solution” is that Trump hangs his hat on pretty much just this one thing as for how he responded to the coronavirus pandemic. Trump has had his privileged life spoon-fed to him, presumably since he was born. To him, doing anything at all is something to be proud of. His default stance is to play golf and let people around him make the decisions. So when Trump decided to ban travel from China, he considers that going above and beyond his duty as a leader.

Remember Health Care? In his 2016 campaign, Trump said he had a Health Care plan to replace Obamacare, and that he would give it to us once he was in office. Once he got in office he berated the GOP Congress for not giving him a Bill he could sign. To Trump, signing onto somebody else’s idea is all you ever need to do as a leader. We’ve seen that time and time again, such as when he takes credit for the bipartisan criminal justice reform bill that Congress passed — simply because he signed it into law.

As for my second point, banning travel from China was a no-brainer that Trump shouldn’t get much credit for. I say that because I saw a memo my employer sent three days before January 31st, which canceled all business travel to and from China. They also imposed a 14-day quarantine for anyone who traveled from China. And they did this alongside other companies around the world.

Banning travel from China was something already put in motion by the private sector before Trump put his name on it. And while it may have been the first decisive action Trump took to battle this pandemic, it should not have also been the final decisive action he took in that battle.