Trump just made things even worse
When Donald Trump abruptly announced weeks ago that he was shutting down nearly all travel from Europe to the United States, it resulted in airports jam packed with potentially infected people who were desperately trying to hurry up and get home. It’s still not clear how many of them brought the coronavirus with them.
When Trump announced today that he was strongly considering quarantining parts of New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut, he surely set off a mass panic as well. Fortunately, he backed down from his threat after just six hours, once New York Governor Andrew Cuomo made clear that he would never go along with such a move.
But how many people panicked and immediately fled New York City during those six hours? Fortunately that’s a small window when it comes to packing up and heading to the airport. But some New Yorkers have cars. How many of them packed up and hit the road?
One can only hope that anyone who panicked and left New York today, under the mistaken belief that Donald Trump had the ability to carry out his phony quarantine, end up self-isolating for fourteen days once they get wherever they’re going. These things can be difficult to measure, but there’s no doubt that to some degree at least, Trump needlessly made the coronavirus crisis even worse today.
