At America’s busiest airports yesterday, we saw the consequences of “minimum necessary” thinking in What if? circumstances. The Trump administration decided to ban travel by most foreign nationals who had recently been in Europe, as a way to reduce exposure and spread of the coronavirus.
The people in charge of the policy apparently thought: Here’s a way to minimize infection from foreigners. Judging by results, they didn’t ask or think about the next round of What if? questions:
What if everyone (naturally) rushes to get back at the same time, before airlines cancel even more flights? What if the flood of passengers swamps the airport’s normal capacity, and so end up in big lines: lines in the jetway to get off the planes, lines at passport clearance, lines for baggage collection and Customs, lines—ah, the bitter irony—for medical screening, to separate out those who have been in high-infection zones? What if some or many of the people in these jammed lines were already infected? What if the hundreds of people packed together for hours in these scrums lost all “social distance,” from countless strangers, while penned up?
From the article: