Trump said all travel (“As a result a large number of new clusters in the United States were seeded by travelers from Europe. After consulting with our top government health professionals I have decided to take several strong, but necessary, actions to protect the health and well-being of all Americans. To keep new cases from entering our shores, we will be suspending all travel from Europe to the United States for the next 30 days.”).
It sounds like the Secretary of Homeland Security is walking back Trump’s statement.
I don’t know that there’s a large enough amount of transit (as a percentage of all transit) through Europe, by non-Europeans, to the US that it matters greatly whether you’re blocking the people rather than the planes. It’s nice for people flying in to the US from Dubai, switching planes in Paris. But, so far as the stock market is going to feel tomorrow morning, I don’t expect them to welcome the news greatly.
ETA: Woops, I see that the “cargo” element is missing. That is significant.
The above is manifestly NOT what Trump said in tonight’s address, but at least makes a little more sense than what we did hear. Useful or not, however, this action seems way too late to have a significant effect on the propagation of COVID-19 in the US. Setting aside for the moment anything addressing the massive societal disruption already starting to take place, what we seem to need most urgently is: 1) much more comprehensive testing than has been managed so far; 2) a crash program to produce and stockpile medical equipment to treat what is almost certain to be a massive flood of serious respiratory cases; and 3) another crash program to create temporary facilities to better handle the expected case load.
My best guess is that we have roughly 5-7 weeks to get this under some semblance of control. Can we do it? I’m not overly optimistic. Trump tonight looked utterly dazed, and never more clueless and out of touch with reality. I can only hope there’s still some leadership buried somewhere in this monumental, world-class, for-the-ages clusterfuck, 'cause it sure ain’t there at the top.
“White House has clarified that the Europe ban DOES NOT apply to goods and trade”
Commentary:
"The White House has clarified that the President was reading words whose meaning he hadn’t reviewed before he addressed the nation and didn’t understand as he was reading them.
“There will be exemptions for Americans who have undergone appropriate screenings and these prohibitions will not only apply to the tremendous amount of trade and cargo, but various other things as we get approval.”
Good job stealing someone else’s speech there, bucko.
When it comes to Trump, putting on the occasional sheet of tinfoil is reasonable but I think that claiming “Putin” on this one is several levels below the idea that Trump, in all his organized and well-planned fashion, decided that he wanted to be the person to break the news and stole the speech from Fauci, Pence, or someone and didn’t bother to get a review.
Loser Donald is saying that he’ll do things “as soon as we (I) get approval” because he has no understanding of how the government he’s supposed to be in charge of works and has no idea why he can’t automatically decree whatever he wants.