Bill Gates says Trump’s partial travel ban made the coronavirus pandemic worse - Trade Stocks

Bill Gates says Trump’s partial travel ban made the coronavirus pandemic worse

By Sun, Sep 20, 2020

‘We created this rush, and we didn’t have the ability to test or quarantine those people.’

That’s billionaire philanthropist and Microsoft MSFT, -1.24% co-founder Bill Gates explaining in a “Fox News Sunday” interview how President Trump’s partial travel ban on China and later other countries may have actually worsened the coronavirus outbreak.

“So seeded the disease here,” Gates told Fox host Chris Wallace. “You know, the ban probably accelerated that, the way it was executed.”

Trump issued a partial travel ban on China on Jan. 31, with initial reports having emerged late in 2019 of the outbreak in Wuhan, in Hubei Province. He followed up with more bans in February and March that covered Europe and other hot spots. The president often points to the bans as evidence of his prompt response.

But that’s not how Gates sees it.

“March saw this incredible explosion — the West Coast coming from China and then the East Coast coming out of Europe — and so, even though we’d seen China and we’d seen Europe, that testing capacity and clear message of how to behave wasn’t there,” Gates explained.

Here are his comments:

The U.S. currently leads the world in infections and deaths, with almost 6.8 million cases, according to the latest tally from Johns Hopkins. The death toll by numerous measures has topped 200,000.

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