[Genuine Realist]

Trump's border closings on January 30th were well ahead of the curve = and roundly criticized by the New York Times, Joe Biden, and others, as xenophobic.

I was surprised to read this about the NY Times, because most of the criticism I remember generally from that time was that travel bans are ineffective in combating a pandemic, which was the WHO's position (and doesn't make much sense to me early in a pandemic). So I looked through the Opinion section of the NY Times from Jan 30 to Feb 9 and found no NY Times Editorials on the travel ban at all. One columnist, Jamelle Bouie, who of course does not represent the opinion of the paper, wrote a column on February 4 about how the inclusion of Nigeria to the African nations added to the expanded travel ban shows Trump's travel ban was racist at the heart, but it is not clear whether Bouie was also faulting the original travel ban from China. I'd appreciate learning if there is something I missed--perhaps as part of an editorial primarily focused on a different topic, or was the travel ban criticized as xenophobic elsewhere in the paper? Thanks.

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And BTW, I also looked up Biden, and it is not really clear that Biden criticized the travel ban as xenophobic. He never specifically called it that, and when he used the term xenophobic it might have been in response to Trump calling Covid-19 the Chinese virus. see Politifact article It seems to me a matter of interpretation, and at least based on this article a legitimate argument could be made for both interpretations. This is true of many of Trump's statements, which are so vague they can be interpreted in multiple ways.

If the Board can ever get beyond the pursuit of someone to blame, you get to the far more interesting question of what in the nature of the virus caused it to catch every health service in the world - staffed with conscientious, knowledgable, committed people - flatfooted.

[Genuine Realist]

Trump's border closings on January 30th were well ahead of the curve = and roundly criticized by the New York Times, Joe Biden, and others, as xenophobic.

I was surprised to read this about the NY Times, because most of the criticism I remember generally from that time was that travel bans are ineffective in combating a pandemic, which was the WHO's position (and doesn't make much sense to me early in a pandemic). So I looked through the Opinion section of the NY Times from Jan 30 to Feb 9 and found no NY Times Editorials on the travel ban at all. One columnist, Jamelle Bouie, who of course does not represent the opinion of the paper, wrote a column on February 4 about how the inclusion of Nigeria to the African nations added to the expanded travel ban shows Trump's travel ban was racist at the heart, but it is not clear whether Bouie was also faulting the original travel ban from China. I'd appreciate learning if there is something I missed--perhaps as part of an editorial primarily focused on a different topic, or was the travel ban criticized as xenophobic elsewhere in the paper? Thanks.

---

And BTW, I also looked up Biden, and it is not really clear that Biden criticized the travel ban as xenophobic. He never specifically called it that, and when he used the term xenophobic it might have been in response to Trump calling Covid-19 the Chinese virus. see Politifact article It seems to me a matter of interpretation, and at least based on this article a legitimate argument could be made for both interpretations. This is true of many of Trump's statements, which are so vague they can be interpreted in multiple ways.

If the Board can ever get beyond the pursuit of someone to blame, you get to the far more interesting question of what in the nature of the virus caused it to catch every health service in the world - staffed with conscientious, knowledgable, committed people - flatfooted.