Coronavirus: are travel bans an effective way to curb Covid-19’s spread?
- Politicising an outbreak is irresponsible. Viruses have no passports and those who want to travel will find a way around travel restrictions
- In today’s borderless word, we must find new ways to collaborate globally – our entire existence as a species depends upon it
This is normal because outbreaks are political, social and psychological phenomena as much as they are scientific, medical and epidemiological. Successfully tackling them depends on scientists and politicians having equal stature, but the current crisis has seen politics overriding science in decisions surrounding travel restrictions.
While science is imperfect and will evolve during volatile events such as outbreaks, countries at present appear to be engaged in an escalatory travel ban “arms race”. Politicians and governments are outbidding each other to appear the safest, strongest or most responsible, and weaponising safety measures to score political points.
Politicising an outbreak is irresponsible, and travel bans don’t work. Viruses have no passports and those who want to travel will find a way in this hyperlinked world. Bans could create a false sense of security that promotes complacency and diverts attention and resources away from other important measures like contact tracing and surveillance. The first wave of restrictions didn’t protect against new countries acquiring Covid-19, as the disease caused by the coronavirus is known.
What’s more, such bans might not even be necessary. China and Italy have essentially locked down hundreds of millions of citizens; the ethics of quarantines and human rights aside, this is doing the world a huge favour. Citizens elsewhere are voluntarily staying at home. Airlines are cancelling flights following the laws of supply and demand. With these three fundamental forces, bans could be just political theatrics as the last refuge of the scoundrel.
Yet politicians resort to travel bans for a combination of reasons. With trust in governments declining everywhere, leaders want to shore up their legitimacy by appearing responsive and responsible. Bans fit neatly into a nationalist agenda and allow politicians to fit the narrative of being both strong and caring. Strong borders could also be a society’s psychological reaction to decades of rampant globalisation that eroded the identity and control of nation states.
A global trend towards the reductionism of complex political problems means that travel bans are often considered intuitive and simple for citizens to understand. Unfortunately, such bans are also an easy populist outlet for underlying racism and chauvinism amid fears of a rising China.
Nation states continue to ask their citizens to believe that their borders will protect against every threat. Borders may have been helpful in a world of state-on-state warfare, where migration and globalisation was minimal, but they cannot effectively protect against outbreaks, climate change, antimicrobial resistance, overwhelming migration, global tax governance, or accelerating global inequality.
These are species-level challenges that require nation states to enter a new era of enlightened self-interest. These problems require collective action, with incremental changes in some parts of the global governance architecture and dramatic reform in others. We must find new ways to facilitate, incentivise and reward collaboration between individuals and between nation states in today’s borderless world.
The panorama of human history has encompassed survival of the fittest for not only the individual, but kingdoms, nation states and companies. With the array of existential threats in the Anthropocene, we must now consciously enter a new era: survival of the fittest species. Our entire existence depends on new ways to collaborate globally, not retreat behind the ramparts every time a global crisis arrives.
Borders are psychological, legal and political relics of the nation state era. They are fit-for-purpose for yesterday’s Westphalian order but woefully inadequate for today’s species-level threats. Travel bans during the Covid-2019 outbreak are unfortunately predictable, but they could be the last gasps of nation states before we enter tomorrow’s necessary new era of global collaboration.
Dr Swee Kheng Khor specialises in health systems, health policies and global health, and is currently based at the University of Oxford