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With the Coronavirus rapidly spreading throughout the world, and already over 2,000 people known to be infected with the virus, it has become vital for countries to take more action to control the spread of this disease. However, the World Health Organization (WHO) continues to delay declaring the outbreak a global health emergency as most of the cases of infection are located in China. A few days ago, President Trump claimed that the US had the coronavirus "completely under control," and with 5 confirmed cases of infection in the US, the Center for Disease Control (CDC) maintains that there is no immediate health concern for Americans.
But, with cases in a dozen countries and 56 confirmed deaths globally, I think that it is important that more action is taken to prevent the spread of the coronavirus. In the past, the World Health Organization has been criticized for being slow to react to outbreaks (such as the Ebola outbreak in 2014), so it is important that they declare this a global health emergency soon. While I understand wanting to limit the panic that would follow declaring the spread of coronavirus a global health emergency, doing so would enable numerous countries to coordinate their efforts to prevent what could possibly become the next pandemic.
Do you think this outbreak should be declared a global health emergency?
Some people have suggested imposing a travel ban on China. How effective do you think this would be? What other measures could the US take to limit the spread of coronavirus?
5 comments:
Considering the effects and methods of spreading of the coronavirus is still unknown, I think it would probably be a good idea to classify it as a global health emergency and then downgrade it if necessary, rather than not treating it with the caution that it deserves. I do not support a travel ban on China, considering the virus has already spread across the globe, making it too late to quarantine the virus completely. However, I have heard of airports using thermal screening to detect people with feverish temperatures in an attempt to limit the numbers of people with the virus traveling, which I do support.
So I think we've all seen the memes about the 20s usually resulting in some sort of epidemic, so WATCH OUT. But I think the WHO should be taking more action, especially because acting sooner than later will probably save lives. So yeah, I think they should declare the outbreak a global health emergency (and the disease isn't only in China, it's just mostly seen there). I don't think a travel ban should be enforced, just because I feel that if people are trying to leave an infected area, they should be able to rather than being forced to stay in a contaminated area. I don't think that's really fair :/
I think this outbreak should be declared a global health emergency. The fact that all around the world, more than 2,000 people are infected and 56 people have died from the virus shows how major this is. I heard that the virus reached the US (I think specifically LA?) because people from China, who were infected, traveled to the US and spread the disease. This needs to be addressed and the infected people should be quarantined. We do not want the virus to spread any more and Trump needs to do something. Since the World Health Organization is known for acting slowly in the past, action needs to be taken by other stronger authorities. I think a travel ban should be implemented. I’m not sure if putting a ban on just China will help much since it has spread to other countries.
I'm not sure if I would call this a global health emergency, but it definitely has the potential to become something more extreme and measures should be taken to prevent its spread as much as possible and as soon as possible. Epidemics and disease outbreaks are also pretty alarming considering we might not know the actual number of cases (could be more infected people that just haven't been found/recorded yet). It could be seen as a nice gesture by Trump in maybe trying to keep Americans calm, but it's also important to make people aware of any threat this situation could produce to possibly promote better hygiene and caution. I don't really know whether a travel ban would help or not, but I could guess that even if put up by the Trump administration, there will always be ways for Chinese immigrants to find their way in and a ban might make them even more anxious to escape the virus to the U.S. Hopefully the measures being taken now will keep the virus contained and our country safe from its spread.
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