The government exists to protect American citizens from threats to their lives, liberties, and property by supplying public goods that would not be supplied through the market or other voluntary means. In the sphere of immigration policy, this means preventing the travel of foreign-born terrorists, individuals who pose a national security threat, and criminals to the United States. Another category of people who should be barred is those with serious contagious diseases, as I’ve written before. The transmissions of the SARS-CoV‑2/COVID-19 virus, which causes the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19), makes this a pressing issue again.
In response to COVID-19, President Trump created minor travel restrictions and redirected flights, some Senators are calling to ban travel with China, and rumors of additional government actions all mean that we should consider less-costly alternatives to combat the transmission of the virus. Travel-and-immigration-bans are costly, what other options does the government have?
There is growing evidence that COVID-19’s case fatality rate (CFR) is substantially higher than the normal flu with deaths concentrated on the elderly and those with comorbidities. It’s important to note that the CFR is a fatality rate for those who contract COVID-19, not a fatality rate for the entire population. That’s not much of a relief as the fatality rate is high, but it does help us get a better picture of COVID-19’s threat to particular groups. For instance, COVID-19’s CFR is 2.3 percent according to recent evidence from Mainland China. The CFR for those aged 39 and younger is 0.21 percent, but it is 5.96 percent for those aged 60 and above. Protecting the elderly should thus be of prime concern as younger people, especially children, don’t appear to be much affected.
There are several different ways for policymakers to respond to COVID-19. A travel-and-immigration ban is an appropriate policy response if two conditions are met. First, the benefits of a travel-and-immigration-ban are greater than the costs of a travel ban. Second, there are no other less-costly options. This analysis will compare the breakeven point to show how many lives a travel-and-immigration-ban would have to save to make sense. It will then further compare the cost of those less-costly policies that will have big positive impacts.
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