Horowitz: After all this, can we at least socially distance from China?

Imagine living several weeks after 9/11 in 2001 and observing no effort whatsoever to ban box cutters on airplanes. That is exactly what is happening today in Congress, where lawmakers have done everything except address the root cause of how this virus was brought into our country in the first place.

The U.S. and Italy were the first countries to suspend flights from China at the end of January. That was already over two months after this began and well after one month after this plague had become evident to our governments. How is there no effort to require in law that our government cut off visas and travel from countries with viral outbreaks the minute our government intel sources learn about them? Shouldn’t this be the first thing we do?

In their desire to troll the world, the Chinese communists are now shutting off travel from other countries under the laughable premise of containing the virus. “In view of the rapid spread of the new coronavirus epidemic worldwide, China has decided to temporarily suspend entry of foreigners with currently valid visas and residence permits in China,” announced the communist government’s foreign ministry.

How is it that we have no plan of our own to decrease and eliminate our connection to and dependence on China? Why are we not engaging in geopolitical social distancing from the actual source of many of the recent viruses, which undoubtedly, with the habit of eating strange animals, will be the source of future viruses as well? Are we really going to continue bringing in hundreds of thousands of Chinese students between semesters during the flu and pneumonia season next January? Are we going to continue issuing 80,000 green cards per year to Chinese nationals?

This virus was brought in through irresponsible travel from China throughout January. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo admitted himself that the reason New York was hit harder than anywhere else is because of the inflow from China.

He explained on Wednesday that the reason New York has it the worst is “Because we welcome people from across the globe.”

“We have people coming here, we have people who came here from China, who came here from Italy, who came here from all across the globe,” said the governor at his daily press conference. “I had no doubt that the virus was here much earlier than we even know. And I have no doubt that the virus was here much earlier than it was in any other state, because those people come here first.”

Exactly! They couldn’t care less that we were bringing the virus in. Now that it’s too late, Democrats want a travel ban on all Americans traveling outside their home, without evidence that it will help at this juncture. And this has nothing to do with being a welcoming city. This has to do with shutting off travel from countries whose epidemics will destroy everyone and not pandering to political correctness that will get us killed or shut down our entire country.

It’s truly shocking how none of the politicians have even learned the lesson of what caused this to begin with. If not for the president shutting off travel in the eleventh hour, we would have suffered even more outbreaks, on the scale of what we see in New York. As late as February, Nancy Pelosi actually threatened to vote on a bill prohibiting Trump from restricting travel. Worse, as late as mid-March, Pelosi questioned Trump’s travel ban from Europe, which was infested with the China virus at that point! As Dr. Anthony Fauci himself said, the reason Italy got hit so hard is because there was so much inflow of people from China.

The irony is lost on the Left as the governors and mayors one-up one other on how to restrict the travel of Americans from their homes and how to enforce draconian, unconstitutional restrictions. Are we really going to treat immigration and international travel as a greater “constitutional right” than a citizen keeping his shop open or walking in a park, especially when lack of restriction on the former has led to draconian restriction on the latter?

As Sean Davis of the Federalist pointed out, the very same people who championed the Chinatown Lunar New Year parade on February 9 when thousands of people were packed like sardines in the streets are now demanding house arrest of citizens.

Look at this powerful difference between the New York City health commissioner’s attitudes in one month.

Nancy Pelosi is already demanding “the next” coronavirus spending bill even before the most recent one is signed into law. How about the next bill address the root cause of this entire national crisis by ensuring that political correctness never brings this country to its knees ever again?