Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, says the outbreak of the Wuhan, China-originated coronavirus would be “worse” if not for President Trump’s implementation of travel bans on China and Iran.
During a House Oversight and Reform Committee hearing, Fauci told lawmakers that without Trump’s travel bans on China and Iran to halt all travel and migration from those two countries, the spread of the coronavirus would have been worse in the U.S.
“I believe we would be in a worse position,” Fauci said as Rep. Jody Hice (R-GA) asked if the coronavirus outbreak would have been better or worse without Trump’s travel bans.
Fauci also stressed that international travel and migration to the U.S. is playing a detrimental role in further spreading the coronavirus:
Whenever you look at the history of outbreaks, what you see now in an uncontained way and although we are containing it in some respects, we keep getting people coming into the country that are travel-related, we’ve seen that in many of the states that are now involved. [Emphasis added]
…
We will see more cases and things will get worse than they are right now. How much worse they get will depend on our ability to do two things: To contain the influx of people who are infected coming from the outside and the ability to contain and mitigate within our own country. Bottom line, it’s going to get worse. [Emphasis added]
While the nation’s leading medical experts say travel bans have been immensely effective in stopping the spread of the coronavirus, House and Senate Democrats are looking to stop travel bans with newly introduced legislation.
As Breitbart News reported, 220 House Democrats have signed onto a plan to effectively end Trump’s ability to implement travel bans to protect American citizens. Under the Democrats’ “No Ban Act,” travelers directly from Wuhan would have been allowed to continue entering the U.S. while Trump consulted with Congress on a travel ban.
The number of coronavirus cases in the U.S. has hit 1,107 nationwide, including 32 deaths.
Every year, current legal immigration laws allow for nearly half a million Chinese students to study at American schools — delivering more than $10 billion worth of university fees. Likewise, since 2010, tech corporations like Amazon and Microsoft have helped bring close to 60,000 Chinese workers into the U.S. labor market.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.