March 11 (UPI) — President Donald Trump announced Wednesday night that the United States will suspend all travel to the US from Europe in response to the COVID-19 outbreak.
Addressing the nation from the Oval Office, Trump said the United States will ban travel from European countries for 30 days beginning at midnight on Friday in order to prevent new cases of the coronavirus from entering the United States.
“After consulting with our top government health professionals, I have decided to take several strong but necessary actions to protect the health and wellbeing of all Americans,” Trump said.
Trump said the ban will not affect travel from Britain and there will be exemptions for Americans overseas who have undergone appropriate screenings.
“These prohibitions will not only apply to the tremendous amount of trade and cargo but various other things as we get approval. Anything coming from Europe to the United States is what we are discussing,” he said.
Trump said he is also instructing the Small Business Administration to provide low-interest loans to small businesses affected by the coronavirus and asking Congress to increase funding for this program by $50 million and provide Americans with immediate payroll tax relief.
The briefing came after the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced 31 Americans have died from the COVID-19 outbreak and more than 1,000 have been sickened.
Trump warned that the highest risk remains among the elderly population with underlying health conditions and strongly advised nursing homes for the elderly to suspend all medically unnecessary visits and encouraged older people to avoid unnecessary travel.
“Smart action today will prevent the spread of the virus tomorrow,” Trump said.
Well, he did not suspend “all travel.” He suspended travel from countries where he doesn’t have hotels. And he suspended it after the virus was already here, and after wasted weeks of dragging his feet, trying to convince us it was nothing to worry about, or that it was a hoax. Anyone could see the slow-motion gathering storm coming to our shores since late January at least.
He disbanded the NSC team that was tasked with monitoring and looking forward toward potential pandemics 2 years ago, and has consistently sought cuts to the CDC as recently as 3 weeks ago, after the virus was already in the news. Thankfully, Congress has not agreed to his budget cuts.
In his monotone reading of words written for him, he did nothing to reassure Americans that his administration are on top of things. He made at least 3 extreme errors in a 10-minute speech that needed to be corrected as soon as he finished. Whether we were blocking cargo as well as people, whether Americans were included in the travel ban, and that health insurers were waiving co-pays- probably the single most important thing on people’s minds.
No one is praying for him to fail, because if he does, we all do. But he has not, and is not still, rising to the occasion.