US Introduces New Brazil Travel Ban

@ glenn t - I got that from CDC website, which shows a total of 14.1 million. I also checked the COVID Tracking Project you mentioned, which says 14.6 million. What a big difference huh?

"@MKLDH, Not sure where the 14m figure you crow about comes from! "In many of the counts the CDC did provide over the past several months, it missed the large majority of tests. In early May, the CDC reported that only about half a million tests had been conducted in the U.S. But the COVID Tracking Project had tallied the results of more than 7.5 million tests reported by states by then. In late April, the White House used the COVID Tracking Project’s data in a major report on national testing strategy. It cited the data again earlier this week in a press conference. The CDC should provide the country with a single, trustworthy data source on the state of COVID-19 testing. But the fact that its data are still in such disagreement with the state-reported totals means that the CDC’s latest efforts are not of much use to politicians and the public. For now, the agency that should be a respected source of truth in this crisis is only adding to the national confusion." From The Atlantic publication.

@JayBee - FWIW, Wuhan the city just finished 6.5 million tests in the past 9 days. In contrast, US has done 14 million tests in the past 4 months. I'm sure you find that worth bragging about. (Or maybe you will say anything from China is not believable, I dunno) The point I want to make is blaming other countries does little to nothing to help the situation, especially when America is currently in a mess. But this administration apparently relies on such tricks to make itself look less incompetent. As for travel bans, they never really work unless you are doing a blanket ban, like those in Australia and Schengen. Singling out the "hot spot" countries? That's not how contagion works.

Actually I think nowadays it's in every country's best interest to simply ban Americans... I mean which country has the most COVID-19 patients again?

@anthony "If China had been more open (it still isn’t, in spite its ‘low official numbers’, this epidemic might have been slowed. " This is simply ignorant. China is dealing with a totally new virus and it managed to control the spread by locking down an entire city. US knew what was going on in China as early as in January but did almost nothing. I don't know how China could perform much better. In comparison with US, I'd say China has done extremely well. As regard to "low official numbers", you do know that there are American journalists in almost every major Chinese city, right? If anything even close to New York happened, it would be all over the media. The truth is, however, extreme measures by the Chinese government actually worked. Outside Wuhan, the spread of the virus was controlled and therefore the hospitals in all other major cities in China were never flooded. The bottom line is, before starting to blaming China, or any other country, please apply the same standards to US or wherever you are from. If there is one country to blame, I would say it's the US for lacking any actions even KNOWING the virus is spreading, and providing the hotbed for virus to mutate.