[u crank]

The downside of globalism in the age of the pandemic.

Travel data of passengers arriving in the United States from China during the critical period in December, January and February, when the disease took hold in that country, shows a stunning 759,493 people entered the U.S.

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/disa...ry?id=69933625

Those travelers from China included more than 228,000 Americans returning home and hundreds of thousands of Chinese nationals arriving for business, academics, tourism or to visit family.

The data shows how a highly communicable disease can quickly move throughout an interconnected global community, spreading across the globe in a matter of hours. The novel coronavirus was off to the races before the international community knew what had hit it.

"I think this was bound to eventually happen," Kumar said. "The high volume of international travel, the lack of screening, the inconsistent hand-washing and cough control ... these laid down the perfect conditions for a disease to spread. Add that to a virus that is both largely asymptomatic and has a prolonged infectious period, and you have got a perfect storm of factors for a pandemic."

"Could China have announced to the world a couple of weeks earlier that there was concern that a SARS-like outbreak was occurring? Possibly," Ellerin said. "Could an immediate travel ban announced by China have slowed the spread of this virus even further? Likely. But, in the end, given the complexities of global travel and the insidious nature of this virus, even an immediate travel ban probably would not have fully contained this contagious pathogen."