I can see several different scenarios for ending the COVID-19 outbreak in the U. S. One of them is to inoculate enough people in the U. S. against the disease so that between those who have some natural immunity either because they’ve already had it or they’re otherwise naturally immune and those who’ve been inoculated that the disease stops spreading. Or at least its spread slows. The “gotcha” on that is “people in the U. S.”. that strategy presupposes the ability and willingness to stop people entering the country who are carrying the disease.
We could also forcibly inoculate people entering the country against the disease but somehow I can’t envision that happening.
Another way is to be prepared to inoculate the entire world against the disease. As I’ve been saying for most of the last year, inoculating 7 billion people is a problem a couple of orders of magnitude more complicated and expensive than inoculating 330 million (or 200 million or whatever it takes).
What does the Biden Administration have in mind? If, in their zeal to be more virtuous than the hated Trump Administration, they decline from testing and quarantining people entering the country, do they just prefer that the outbreak continue indefinitely? Won’t that expose them to the same charges they’ve been leveling against the Trump Administration’s response to the disease?
And here we are in March 2021 and it still takes 3-5 days to get a PCR test result, access to rapid testing is still restricted (at least in my area).
I don’t know the situation at points of entry, but I would hope that by now – a year later – that there would be a regimen in place to test everyone coming into the country at ports of entry as well as those who come in illegally. I haven’t researched to see what the situation is, but I’m setting my expectations quite low.
First, I am more worried about US travelers going abroad and coming back. Second the last I read foreign travelers do need to get tested before coming here. Did that change or are you just speculating that the Biden admin will change that? At any rate, we already have required vaccinations for foreign travelers to enter the US. Why dont we just add Covid to the list? We still get an occasional case of those on that list but the numbers are small. Now that many of you have decided that WHO is evil we wont see complete international vaccinations.
https://www.londonvaccinationclinic.co.uk/travel-vaccinations-for/americas/usa/
Steve
I agree with your point about US travelers. Our unwillingness to impose a mandatory quarantine is a major issue. On your second point, sure add COVID-19 to the list. It’s largely meaningless with as porous a southern border as we have. We either need to close the border or inoculate the world. Simple as that.
“We either need to close the border or inoculate the world. Simple as that.”
We haven’t had to close the borders and none of those other illnesses have overwhelmed us. If the vaccine ends up working as well as the ones for those on that list, then we wont be overwhelmed and we only get a few cases a year. The costs of closing our borders to everyone from foreign countries does not come close to the benefits. If you are talking about illegal immigrants only we can work on cost effective ways to minimize that but Covid would be a very minor factor.
Now suppose it only works as well as flu vaccine, which at this point seems unlikely. We dont get overrun with flu from immigrants legal or illegal. To be clear, while Covid is much worse than the flu R is likely to stay well under 1 if the vaccine works as well as for flu. We see 50,000 people die, the same as the flu. People will not be willing to reduce travel or inconvenience themselves for that number.
Steve
That depends on how much publicity it gets.