![]() ![]() states and localities via their “ police powers”-a drastic difference from the national authorities of countries such as China and Italy. Constitutional authority for ordering major public-health interventions, such as mass quarantines and physical distancing, lies primarily with U.S. However, faced with questions on legal enforceability, Trump backed away from the mass quarantine, and instead the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) issued a domestic-travel advisory for the area, asking residents of the three states to refrain from nonessential domestic travel for 14 days.įred Milgrim: A New York doctor’s warningĮven if the president desired to take stronger action, America’s national-level response would be hampered in part by its federalist system. Such an order would have restricted the movement of millions of Americans, even in areas with low COVID-19 risk, and could have backfired if it incited mass migrations. Then on March 28, Trump said he might order a two-week quarantine of New York, New Jersey, and parts of Connecticut. Finally swayed by warnings from public-health experts that lifting restrictions too soon could cause far more deaths, he has now extended that timeline to the end of April. On March 24, eager to avoid further economic and social harms arising from business closures and other key physical-distancing measures, the president stated that the U.S. President Donald Trump has expressed inconsistent intentions for a national, or even regional, lockdown. Why has America failed to take more aggressive national action? ![]() But other states have allowed businesses such as bars and restaurants to remain open to the public, or let their school districts decide whether to close schools. ![]() At least 24 states have directed all residents to shelter in place, or stay home. Many states and localities have ordered businesses, schools, and workplaces to close and limited the number of people that can gather in public. Meanwhile in the U.S., where COVID-19 cases are skyrocketing, the approach has been more piecemeal. India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, decreed a 21-day lockdown for 1.3 billion people, the largest cordon sanitaire in world history. Other countries, including Western democracies such as Italy, Spain, and France, are following China’s lead, locking down entire regions or the nation as a whole. The trade-off, of course, was between containing a fast-moving novel virus and wholesale violation of personal freedoms, including movement and privacy. Armed guards, citizen informers, and high-tech surveillance helped ensure compliance with mass quarantines. Many people infected with or exposed to COVID-19 in these same areas were forcibly removed from the population and put into isolation centers for weeks. China’s success is the result of aggressive, far-reaching measures: About 60 million people were locked down in the cordon sanitaire, during which movement was restricted in and out of Wuhan and the larger Hubei province. Just a month ago, thousands of new cases were appearing in mainland China each day, and China’s Hubei province was considered the highest COVID-19 transmission zone on the planet. However, in the absence of a national-level order, such measures are not uniform across the whole country, and Americans can still travel from one area to another-potentially carrying COVID-19 from “hot zones” such as New York and Seattle to low-risk areas.Ĭontrast that with China, once the epicenter of COVID-19 (the novel coronavirus disease), which on March 19 reported no new locally transmitted cases of the disease for the first time since the onset of the pandemic. Many states are acting to contain viral spread through mass closures of businesses and orders to stay inside the home. In the United States, COVID-19 cases top 120,000-now the most of any country in the world-and deaths surpass 2,000. ![]()
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