I don't at all see how this is relevant to the United States in 2021, when COVID-19 is almost completely prevalent, and we require universal vaccination to exit out of the pandemic - International travel restrictions seem meaningless to me now - though they would have been invaluable in January 2020, and maybe even February 2020 - right now the major risk of COVID-19 infection is inside the United States. A handful (or heck, even hundreds) of people coming into the country won't make any difference when we have thousands of new cases a day regardless.
There's a reason Epidemologists don't put much stock in travel restrictions once a pandemic is well underway around the world - they don't do much good.
But - generally, having widespread (ideally very sensitive) COVID testing for any type of travel outside of the home is a good thing. We should have it universally available. Ideally <$10, something that everyone could do weekly, or even daily if they travel a lot.
Just unclear what the focus on international travel is all about here.
Some rationale for blocking international travel - preventing the spread of international variants, and preventing the destination country from being overloaded by incoming infections.
Most nations aren't getting the vaccines yet. Vaccination distribution and delivery require complex logistics. Nations that don't have a good public healthcare infrastructure need time to gear up. Vaccinations have just started and are being given in a phased manner. Blocking International Travel (or at least mandating a 14 day quarantine) helps keep variants in check.
Ironically, it's in countries where there is partial vaccination that we haven't the greatest risk - partial pressure against the virus will select it for stronger ability to be vaccine resistant. It's why it's so important to give everyone two doses of vaccine as quickly as possible and vaccinate the entire population, so you don't have the virus spreading, mutating, and potentially evolving to become vaccine resistant and then endemic in the population. We only get one really good chance to hit herd immunity.
But - longer term - agree with you - wouldn't it be awesome if we had full-viral scans of travelers, international or otherwise - would shut down flu pandemics as well (most of them are imported from other countries).
I think all domestic and international travel should have this requirement at a minimum. Nobody should be on an airplane without a recent negative test. Or working in a factory, hospital, or other indoor environment for that matter, it would be great if essential workers could all routinely get tested once or twice a week, though maybe that's not feasible.
I don't really get the international focus of this either, but it seems like a step in the right direction.
There's a reason Epidemologists don't put much stock in travel restrictions once a pandemic is well underway around the world - they don't do much good.
But - generally, having widespread (ideally very sensitive) COVID testing for any type of travel outside of the home is a good thing. We should have it universally available. Ideally <$10, something that everyone could do weekly, or even daily if they travel a lot.
Just unclear what the focus on international travel is all about here.