Until a few days ago, when I began making plans for a trip to Europe, I was blissfully unaware that anyone who boards an airline flight from a foreign country to the United States is required to present a negative Covid-19 test “conducted on a specimen collected no more than 1 day before the flight’s departure” or proof of having recovered from the disease within the past 90 days. So the Centers for Disease Control decreed in a 30-page ukase issued on December 2, 2021.
The December order superseded an earlier one that required tests but allowed a three-day window for performing them. The rationale for shortening the period was the appearance of the omigod omicron variant, which at that time was brand new and a topic of much fearful speculation, notwithstanding that all indications were that it was milder than earlier Covid strains. Nearly six months have passed since then. Omicron hasn’t proven to be an omega, and it now accounts for almost all cases in the U.S. The incremental risk posed by returning travelers is indistinguishable from nil.
Yet the CDC order remains in place, inconveniencing Americans on their way home and worse than inconveniencing the small number who test positive and are then trapped abroad until they recover. Even though the government is purportedly preventing their return “for the public good”, it will do nothing to ease their burden. The Administration that sends crack pipes “safe smoking kits” to drug addicts free of charge has no sympathy for citizens who may run up thousands of dollars of costs while mandatorily stranded in other countries.
What is the motive for this measure? It does nothing to protect public health, and the high priests of CDC can’t reasonably believe that it does. It would have had little chance of keeping omicron out of the U.S. if it had been issued while the strain was confined to South Africa. It is now as pointless as plugging a leak in the dike after the water has overflowed it. No other country, so far as I can tell, imposes a reciprocal requirement on travelers entering from the U.S. Does the virus act differently in Europe than in North America?
Is the CDC indifferent to the hardships that its policies entail? Or does it see Covid sufferers as sinners who deserve punishment? Or do its leaders just enjoy the exercise of arbitrary power? Whatever the answer, this episode is enough to demonstrate that the organization needs a thorough top-to-bottom overhaul, lest in the future it inflict yet graver damage on the health, safety and prosperity of the Republic.
Update (June 11, 2022): With obvious reluctance, the CDC has rescinded the Covid test requirement for entering the United States by air, effective at a minute after midnight Eastern Daylight Time on June 12th. The order rescinding the previous ukase concedes, perhaps with regret, “that the now-dominant Omicron variant, though more transmissible than prior variants, has generally caused less severe disease among those who are infected”. There’s no admission that it was irrational to try to keep out of the country a virus that is already freely circulating within it.
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