Australia Joins Countries Requiring Covid Tests From China Travelers
Wall Street JournalMAR 23 2023
The evidence from the pandemic is clear: without other policies in place, travel restrictions are an utterly useless measure. Countries failed to stop the spread of variants from India and Africa with travel restrictions, and this time will be no different — a variant will already have a foothold before it is ever detected by a government. There is little evidence that a new variant is spreading in China, and their COVID situation is fueled mostly by domestic vaccine hesitancy. This is a politically motivated piece of "hygiene theater."
China has become a "black box" in the fight against COVID, with no reliable information being provided by the Chinese government. The evidence from China's sudden abandonment of zero-COVID points to a never-before-seen explosion of cases in the nation of 1.4 billion, with the government leaving citizens to fend for themselves. China has often been the bellwether for COVID conditions and trends, and the world must be prepared for new variants and infection surges.