European Union recommends halting non-essential travel from the U.S.

I just wanted to say that I hope time will deal with the pain. You'll always have the memory of her life, and of your love for her.

    The Council of the European Union voted on Monday to recommend reinstating a ban on non-essential travel from the United States due to its high rate of COVID-19 infections.

Political stuff I guess. In lieu of doing something useful, they need to look like at least they're doing something.

I'm not salty about it though, it's good for our economy.

EU citizens have been banned from traveling to the United States for ~18mo now.

This shit is just politics at this point.

We've had less than 16,000 total cases here, most of which stemmed from an outbreak in May that is now under control.

The border is basically only open to citizens and residents, and everybody has to quarantine for 14 days at an approved quarantine hotel or government facility regardless of vaccination status. PCR test no earlier than 3 days before your flight, PCR test upon arrival, rapid test 10 days into quarantine, and PCR test right before your quarantine ends.

Inconvenient? Yes. Expensive? Yes. But you can't argue with the results. Life is pretty damn good here and at least for the time being, Delta has not found its way into the community.

It can increase the spread though, here (CH) a large fraction of local case are tied to people coming back from holidays. Mandatory quarantine would likely help somewhat.

That shows that travel spreads new variants.

More severe travel restrictions earlier (in combination with countries like the US doing what they were supposed to do) could have saved a lot of lives. It's not too late to save a few more.

And you will generally have no idea whether people around you are vaccinated or not, unless you are in a University or somewhere that enforces vaccination, generally this is only if they are actually large enough to register on the local scale as "potential identified source of many new infections" and would want to stay out of the news in that way – ahem, I mean somewhere that is invested in keeping people safe.

I am planning some cross-country travel for a conference in October (really big one, you might have heard of it) and I am really having a hard time with it. I've mostly been isolated for the past year and a half. I am vaccinated and I would really like to see some people. But I do feel like a plague rat even making these plans.

Given the number of people around me (especially as you drive outside of the city parts of Indiana and into farm country) who wear their un-vaccinated status on their sleeve or bumper sticker, as a point of pride or honor, I wouldn't say we're not a threat. But still generally agree with the sentiment.

You may have collectively moved on, but the United States is still banning travel from many, many regions that have a much lower prevalence of COVID-19 than it does.

Reciprocally banning Americans from traveling seems like an appropriate response.

The locator forms are weirdly _inconsistent_, though; the Spanish one asks for seat number and incorporates the vaccine cert; the Irish one isn't interested in seat number and you have to show the vaccine cert separately. I'm somewhat surprised this hasn't all been standardised.

Moreover, Delta is not a significant threat in countries where at-risk populations have been mostly vaccinated, which describes the US and most European countries. Infections != deaths.

It will take a minute before the single EU countries will adopt regulations following the the recommendation.

[0] https://app.euplf.eu/

Also, yes, I agree with you that this is likely retaliation.

Other countries have centralized national governments with full jurisdiction over public health and the capability of imposing a uniform policy nationwide. Some indeed have uniform policies. Others have policies that vary by region depending on the infection rate, etc. (You see the same thing within US, or German, states.)

The EU largely doesn't set policy here; it's a member state competency. And there are significant cultural differences around vaccine acceptance.

One notable difference, though, is that it's almost never a party political issue in the same way as it is in the US; I don't think there's anywhere in Europe with party-based differences in vaccination and mask acceptance remotely on the scale of the US.

For example, "federal" level can say mandatory masks indoors, while "state" level can say mandatory masks both indoors and outdoors.

It's quite flexible, and sometimes ridiculous. At one point all cafes were closed here, but I could go 2 kilometers to the east where there's no such restriction because it's in a different "state".

"Federal" and "state" in quotes because we don't call them that, but for simplicity in comparison.

Kinda looks like the cat's out of the bag.

Help Big Brother out, blame each other!

I refuse.

So long as they - antivaxers - are filling hospital emergency rooms and killing other people by DDOSing caregivers, I absolutely fucking refuse.

But antivax? Vaccinations clearly reduce incidences of COVID-19, especially those cases that induce the most strain on our health systems. And the strain that the current wave is producing is indeed intense--there are water treatment plants struggling to get enough liquid oxygen because so much is going to intubated COVID-19 patients. So there's increased risk of giving a major metropolitan city cholera because of the current COVID-19 wave.

So the justification for not getting a vaccine at this point that the antivaxers push basically boils down to "I don't feel like it." That's not going to engender a lot of sympathy from those who realize that the antivaxers are basically murderers by proxy.