Old Uncle Joe has been forced to deal with heavy scrutiny this past week due to his past attacks against former President Donald Trump for his various pandemic restrictions in the wake of the Biden administration’s announcement that it was going to be setting back up a list of requirements for travelers making their way into the U.S. from China.
The announcement from the administration takes place as the coronavirus numbers throughout China have spiked insanely high over the past few weeks, with multiple millions of cases being reported to the public on a day-to-day basis by local health authorities.
“CDC is announcing today that it will implement a requirement for a negative COVID-19 test or documentation of recovery for air passengers boarding flights to the United States originating from the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and the Special Administrative Regions of Hong Kong and Macau,” explained the CDC in its own release. “CDC is announcing this step to slow the spread of COVID-19 in the United States during the surge in COVID-19 cases in the PRC given the lack of adequate and transparent epidemiological and viral genomic sequence data being reported from the PRC.”
The statement explained that the new policy is slated to take effect this coming week and states that all passengers over the age of two years old “will be required to get a test (such as a PCR test or an antigen self-test administered and monitored by a telehealth service or a licensed provider and authorized by the Food and Drug Administration or the relevant national authority) no more than 2 days before their departure from the PRC, Hong Kong, or Macau, and show a negative test result to the airline upon departure.”
A number of conservatives were fast to highlight the previous attacks against Trump carried out by Biden in 2020 for setting up various travel restrictions for those flying into the country from China.
“I always treated the Chinese Virus very seriously, and have done a very good job from the beginning, including my very early decision to close the ‘borders’ from China – against the wishes of almost all,” stated Trump in a social media post back on the 18th of March, 2020. “Many lives were saved. The Fake News new narrative is disgraceful & false!”
Biden issued a response at the time: “Stop the xenophobic fear-mongering. Be honest. Take responsibility. Do your job.”
Biden’s team stated just a week later that the then-former vice president was not criticizing Trump’s coronavirus travel restrictions.
“Vice President Biden was stressing the enormity of the coronavirus threat and the urgent need for a comprehensive response strategy grounded in science and strong government coordination,” explained Andrew Bates, a then-campaign spokesman. “Meanwhile, Donald Trump was disregarding warnings from medical and intelligence experts about the virus. The Vice President has decried Trump’s xenophobia for years, and was saying that it shouldn’t influence the U.S. approach to this outbreak. This was not in reference to coronavirus travel restrictions. Travel restrictions, when supported by science, advocated by public health officials, and backed by a full strategy can be warranted. Travel restrictions can buy time; but here, the time they bought for preparation was squandered when Trump used it to downplay, rather than ready the country for, the disease.”
