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In response to the delta variant of Covid-19, the US is extending its travel ban on citizens from the European Union and China. Meanwhile, it is still possible to enter the US from Indonesia, which is arguably the current global centre of the pandemic. In contrast, life seems to be orderly in most parts of China, and some European countries have vaccinated more of their citizens than the US.
There is no logic to this difference in regulations. Maybe people from all those countries should be allowed in the US, or maybe none of them should. But it is nonsensical to let in those from what is possibly the most dangerous country.
This is part of a broader and highly disturbing trend: It is getting harder to say that US Covid policy makes any sense at all.
Consider that the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of the Covid vaccines is still what is called an emergency use authorisation, and the agency will not commit to a time frame for giving them full approval. At the same time, virtually every branch of America’s federal, state and local governments is working hard to convince people that getting vaccinated is imperative.
Both sides cannot be right in their perspective and messaging. (To me the issue is clear: The FDA ought to give immediate full approval to what are already the best-studied vaccines in human history.)
Maybe the FDA sees itself as defending its credibility by withholding full approval, but at this point that is little more than a sick joke. Lack of full approval sends a skeptical cue, and every other part of the government is communicating a contrary message. In the meantime, Americans are dying. How is all this going to help the reputation of the FDA?
Again, this is more of an absurdity than a mistake. If I posted the FDA’s official “hesitant†position on vaccines on social media, I might get censored or canceled.
The list of irrational policies goes on. The federal government tells people that a vaccine is more important than a test, yet to get into the US you need a negative test result, not a vaccine.
The delta variant is sweeping the US, and it is significantly more infectious, yet the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) doesn’t have the data tools to know whether this is an early, middle or late stage of an outbreak. This is after a year and a half of a pandemic that has killed more than 600,000 Americans. Have you ever wondered whether the US will do better “next time� Well, the next time is now — and the country is still flailing across some significant dimensions. The inability to do the simple “right thing†is troubling for a number of reasons.
First, when it comes to vaccines, these are bad decisions in their own right — and they are costing human lives, jobs, and economic output.
But the problems run even deeper. In some ways the US is like a basketball player who cannot make a shot from 10 feet. That is almost always a sign that more complex plays are also going awry, even if this can’t always be spotted by outsiders.
In the longer run, this incompetence contributes to lack of trust in government. It is easy to mock the vaccine skeptics, but when the government is wrong about so many other things, including some simple things, why should it be heeded on more complicated matters?
Policy mistakes about vaccines would seem to justify mistrust of a much broader swath of government policy. Another $1 trillion for infrastructure? Sounds like a good idea in principle, but will it really work as expected? How well does the government work when no one can really watch it? Perhaps most important, there is a cascading effect: If you can’t get the simple things right, your capabilities are likely to deteriorate even further.
—Bloomberg