by A Siegel
Who would’ve thunk it … with suddenly announced travel restrictions,
- people would flock back to the United States;
- agencies wouldn’t have time to think through implications of and prepare for massive increase of travelers;
- many thousands of people would be in tight, closed areas perfect for coronavirus transmission for an extended period; and then
- released out into the community with no guidance about what to do, who to contact if they started to feel ill.
This was the case with numerous airports around the country after Trump’s sudden announcement of restrictions on travel from Europe.
ORD, DFW, JFK customs lines tonight. Things a mess right now. pic.twitter.com/nujPhxWexC
— Travis Whitfill MPH (@twhitfill) March 15, 2020
https://twitter.com/_lminmd_/status/1239057559388110850
We already know that the Trump (mal)Administration did not coordinate or communicate with European countries before announcing travel restrictions. With what happened in airports, it seems almost certain that (not nepotism son-in-law) point man Jared Kushner didn’t communicate and coordinate with key US government and airport organizations either.
https://twitter.com/sausnetz/status/1238934350164627457
Let’s consider what happened at Virginia’s Dulles Airport in a situation that resembled either “the ignorant Middle Ages during the plague years or the most chaotic airport in the least developed country”.
- roughly 1,000+ people, at a time, for three hours or more, with
- “no attempt to enable social distancing; … packed closely together”;
- “many … coughing, sneezing and looking unwell”;
- special lines for “confirmed corona cases” with “no separation for this group — no plastic sheets, not even a bit of distance”; and,
- Â “the fingerprint screen … was not wiped, sprayed or in any way sanitized between individuals”.
Anyone who has flown through Dulles will recognize the layout where “the way the lines were organized, snaking around, might have been designed to ensure that one sick person would expose the maximum number of others.”
A quick temperature check, asked how you feel and whether you’d been to China or India and, well, sent off on your way to interact with the rest of the community. No instructions for self-quarantine, no instructions if symptoms emerged, no …
Simply put, a bungled arrivals hall (lack of) organization amid a global pandemic demonstrating in yet another way the ham-handed and often counter-productive manner that is the hallmark of Donald Trump’s and Team Trump’s (mis)management of the corona virus response.
This is an illustration of Trump’s tragic incompetence that will wind up getting thousands of Americans killed. This is what the GOP, Fox News, and the conservative movement have given us: death. https://t.co/TNSUbLmFFO
— David Corn (@DavidCornDC) March 15, 2020
We in Virginia (don’t) thank you, Trump, for creating a coronavirus infection petri dish in northern Virginia that will, with near certainty, lead to increased infection rates in the Commonwealth.
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