US can’t look for Covid scapegoats

THIS week a friend of mine almost had her door kicked down by armed police.

Her crime? Returning to her home in the US after spending several days in London.

There was nothing to prevent her from f lying back to New York, having met al l the strict protocols and testing negative for Covid before her f light.

And on arrival back in Manhattan she was diligently ensconced in her apartment seeing out her quarantine period when the cops arrived to check if she was home.

The bang on her door came as some Americans appeared to make Britain the new pariah state after t h e “mut a n t ” s t r a i n of Covid- 19 sent cases soaring.

New York Mayor Bill De Blasio’s called for a complete ban on travel between London and the Big Apple.

He said: “Right now you can still get on a plane in London and not even have proof you have a negative test, then come here and merrily spread the disease. Why is that going on?”

He spoke as though our neighbours, t he Brits, held t he same disregard for the virus as millions continue to do in the US.

De Blasio suggested the lack of a full ban was “madness” and said there must be a “total ban” immediately while calling for a ban on all travel between the two cities.

Mr De Blasio added: “This new variant is tremendously troubling. Let’s have a travel ban right now.

“Buy us time to get the vaccinations done and protect people.

“The amount of inconvenience it causes to travellers pales in comparison this variant poses to all of us. Let’s shut down that danger now.”

Yet America itself goes about its daily life as it has since day one of the pandemic.

Step into some States, and y ou wouldn’t know t h e country was experiencing record numbers of coronavirus cases.

For many, despit e t he death toll, Covid remains a hoax or merely an infringement on their civil liberties.

For Donald Trump, it is forgotten. Since losing the election, he has paid almost zero attention to the rising death toll.

In his final days in office, he can finally say he made America a world leader – in coronavirus deaths and infections.

So far, as he continues to moan about his election loss in between rounds of golf, America has lost more than 355,000 people with a further 21 million being infected.

The final toll, whenever that will be, will be thousands more. Despair a nd doubt a re understand a bl e reactions to the news that a strain of t he c oronavir us has e v olved t o become more transmissible than the viruses that have already infected almost 80 million people worldwide and caused 1.7 million deaths.

How could this get any worse? But the truth is it could.

The new strain wherever it may be from should be a wake- up call that we are not helpless in battling the pandemic.

Until the vaccine becomes widely administered, there is only one way to stop the new strain from taking hold and hitting millions of more people.

Redoubling all the methods to re duce t h e spread but al s o i n America’s case, implementing for once a coherent, far stricter broader strategy.

While i t s l eader and el ect ed officials look for a scapegoat to blame like China and now the UK for its woeful Covid record , suspending transport links in the short term may help, but it won’t stop the virus.

Already the UK strain has been seen in several states across the US.

If the pandemic has taught us anything, it is that the virus is relentless and opportunistic.

Until societies on both sides of the Atlantic stop playing roulette with Covid and follow government advice, we will never get a grip.

If pandemic has taught us anything, it is the virus is relentless