Except that the academic literature before COVID clearly showed travel bans work very well, and the manslaughtering articles arguing against them were motivated purely by partisan signaling. https://twitter.com/germanrlopez/status/1385601952436850692

The travel ban issue is especially egregious because we know now that the Trump administration was considering a much more sweeping ban early in and was persuaded out of it by Fauci making these kinds of arguments.

The travel issue isn’t like centralized quarantine or an early mask rule where it’s some outlandish hypothetical.

We actually know that it was a real consideration within the administration and it lost because experts weighed in heavily against it.

I think we should be especially unforgiving of those experts (or would-be experts) because THE ACADEMIC LITERATURE INDICATED THAT BANS WORK.

Actual empirical studies of bans during the 1918 pandemic show that they are very effective NPIs. This is a well known finding that many experts are aware of but chose to ignore.