President Biden has implemented a travel ban on 8 African countries due to concerns over a new Covid-19 variant that scientists fear could evade the current crop of available vaccines. It’s strange to see this headline since whenever President Trump implemented a travel ban, such as from China, he was labeled “xenophobic” for such a move even though it was clear the ban didn’t happen soon enough.
Biden, on the campaign trail in 2020, went out of his way many times to bash Trump over travel restrictions aimed at slowing the spread of the Coronavirus from China and Europe into the United States. Now that President Clowncar is in charge, it seems travel bans targeting specific countries and regions are no longer xenophobic, but perfectly acceptable tools in the chest of combating Covid spread.
The new variant, labeled Omicron, is causing great concern in Europe and the fear is now escalating to the United States as well with travel restrictions aimed at slowing or containing the spread from southern Africa, the origin region:
The World Health Organization (WHO) has declared a new coronavirus variant to be “of concern” and named it Omicron.
It had a large number of mutations, and early evidence suggested an increased reinfection risk, the WHO said.
It was first reported to the WHO from South Africa on 24 November, and has also been identified in Botswana, Belgium, Hong Kong and Israel.
A number of countries around the world have now decided to ban or restrict travel to and from southern Africa.
Travellers from South Africa, Namibia, Zimbabwe, Botswana, Lesotho and Eswatini will not be able to enter the UK unless they are UK or Irish nationals, or UK residents.
US officials said flights from South Africa, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Namibia, Lesotho, Eswatini, Mozambique and Malawi would be blocked, mirroring earlier moves taken by the EU. It will come into effect on Monday.
Why did the World Health Organization (WHO) skip over nu and xi in the Greek alphabet? The “nu” variant was skipped because nu sounds like the word “new” when pronounced, which would have been confusing.
The next in the alphabet, the “xi” variant, would be confusing as well since it could be conflated with Xi Jinping, head of the Chinese Communist Party, and the WHO certainly doesn’t want to ruffle any feathers in China:
If the WHO is this scared of the Chinese Communist Party, how can they be trusted to call them out the next time they're trying to cover up a catastrophic global pandemic? https://t.co/wURdLcdqw2
— Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) November 26, 2021
It’s pretty clear that every variant has been the “Xi” variant since this entire pandemic likely originated in a Chinese lab, by accident or design, after an attempted cover-up by the Chinese Communist Party.
As a result of all the chatter and concern over Omicron, President Biden implemented a travel ban effective on Monday, Nov. 29, from eight African countries:
South Africa
Botswana
Zimbabwe
Namibia
Lesotho
Eswatini
Mozambique
Malawi
The ban does not apply to U.S. citizens or lawful permanent residents currently living in these countries.
Let’s take a stroll back to February of 2020, the very beginning of the pandemic when the smartest people in the room were calling Trump’s Covid travel bans “xenophobic” at the time:
We are in the midst of a crisis with the coronavirus. We need to lead the way with science — not Donald Trump’s record of hysteria, xenophobia, and fear-mongering. He is the worst possible person to lead our country through a global health emergency.
— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) February 1, 2020
It’s amazing this tweet is still up since it was wrong then and continues to be wrong now in so many ways. Is Biden’s new travel ban based on science or xenophobia? The White House claims the former, but Vice President Harris did accuse President Biden of being a racist during the 2020 campaign, so we can’t rule out blatant xenophobia either.
Politicians were tripping over themselves to call Trump a racist and accuse him of “fear-mongering” for trying to restrict travel from China over Coronavirus concerns. The truth is that the virus moved much faster than any government anticipated, and the lies and cover-up from China made it impossible for anyone to limit the spread with travel bans that came too late.
Some days it still feels like we’re back in early 2020 again with travel bans and fears of uncontrolled spread headlining the news. There will always be a new variant since this virus morphs and evolves rather quickly. Fearing the Omicron variant doesn’t have the same ring as fearing the Delta variant. “Omicron” sounds like an old electronics brand that made TV/VCR combos in the early 1990s. Maybe it was the sister company to Quasar?
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