Will France Block US Travellers?

NYT reports EU keen to lump US in no entry bucket with Mother Russia and Brazil, while allowing access to visitors from the PRC.

Who gives any credibility to this?

I know that, as it is, some high end French establishments are not opening now, as permitted, for lack of foreign clientele.

Re: Will France Block US Traveller’s?

My understanding is that while St Barth is French, it is not a part of the EU.

Right. And apparently EU would have some challenges to imposing restriction on member nations, but France, and thus Saint-Barth, might choose to comply.

The reports that I believe broke the news were similar:

Fox News: "Nations in the 27-member bloc are negotiating between two lists of countries whose citizens are allowed to enter based on how their governments are handling COVID-19. A European Union official told Fox News that according to criteria issued by the European Commission earlier this month, '... it is difficult to see how U.S. citizens could qualify' for entry beginning in July."

NYT: "European nations are currently haggling over two potential lists of acceptable visitors based on how countries are faring with the coronavirus pandemic... Both lists...exclude the United States and other countries that were deemed too risky because of the spread of the virus."

Both outlets emphasized negative economic and other factors that would make EU officials far from keen on (enthusiastic or excited about) the position in which the current status of the US outbreak puts them.

I have no insight into whether a ban will happen or how it would impact St Barth, which, as Kevin notes is not part of Schengen area, and as JEK puts it elsewhere "appears (to) follow the French decision until they don't"....

Re: Will France Block US Traveller’s?

KevinS said:

My understanding is that while St Barth is French, it is not a part of the EU.

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I think that the following describes the SBH / EU situation:

2012. Caribbean island of Saint Barthélémy withdraws from EU

Saint Barthélémy, a small Caribbean island, was a part of the EU given that it belonged to a French overseas region, Guadeloupe. French overseas regions are regarded as EU integral parts and, in fact, they are depicted on the map printed on all Euro banknotes. In 2007, however, Saint Barthélémy voted to secede from Guadeloupe. Later on, the government of Saint Barths, as the island is also known, called on France to review the island's relationship with the EU. As per the final agreement, Saint Barthélémy withdrew from the Union and joined instead the Overseas Countries and Territories (OCT) list. OCTs enjoy a peculiar status: their citizens are also EU citizens, but their territories do not belong to the EU. All OCTs are dependencies or semi-autonomous territories belonging to either one of the following member states: France, the Netherlands, the UK and Denmark -this is the case for Greenland since 1985.
https://www.nationalia.info/new/107...ia-greenland-and-saint-barthelemy-experiences

SBH is not within the EU or the Schengen space, but France is. And whatever France decides with the other EU member countries in regard to border control might impact the whole nation, including St Barth and the rest of the French Caribbean. The last 3 months clearly showed that Paris decides if the borders open or not (the sheriff decided to open the island a couple of weeks before the official date but that does not mean that he has full control of the borders. Far from it).

I could see two reasons why France might block US traveller's:

1. Reciprocity. Europeans are currently not allowed to visit the United States: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/travelers/from-other-countries.html. Reciprocity was mentioned several times by Edouard Philippe (French Prime Minister), in reference to the UK and the US.

2. The pandemic is way more active in the US than in the EU: https://www.gzeromedia.com/the-graphic-truth-two-different-pandemics-eu-vs-us.





The United States and the European Union have comparable population sizes, but the trajectories of their COVID-19 outbreaks have been vastly different. New data released by the European Center for Disease Control and Prevention shows that while there are around 4,000 new COVID cases in the EU each day, the United States is now recording more than 30,000 new cases of the virus each day – eight times higher than Europe. At least 23 US states have reported significant upticks in new daily COVID-19 cases in recent days, raising fears of an approaching "second wave" of infection. And while some politicians in the US have ascribed the difference to discrepancies in testing, a close analysis shows that the United States and the EU are conducting roughly the same number of tests per million people. Here's a look at the seven-day rolling average of new COVID cases in the EU and the US since March.

islander said:

The United States and the European Union have comparable population sizes ...

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...looking on line, the US appears to have a population of approx 328MM and EU approx 446MM.

approx 36% more populous

if that’s correct ???

Uh oh, does that mean they'll be more Canadians then Americans on island?

crescentbeach said:

Uh oh, does that mean they'll be more Canadians then Americans on island?

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Better than NYers.:biglaugh:

cassidain said:

...looking on line, the US appears to have a population of approx 328MM and EU approx 446MM.

approx 36% more populous

if that’s correct ???

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Yes, the EU has about 100 Million more citizens than the United States. So, on a per capita basis, the chart shown would look even worse for Americans.

garykool81 said:

Yes, the EU has about 100 Million more citizens than the United States. So, on a per capita basis, the chart shown would look even worse for Americans.

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how many tests per day for the EU?
personally, I don’t worry about the number of cases. It’s a virus. A huge number of people will contract. Approx 50 million Americans contract the flu annually. CDC thinks perhaps half that number have contracted corona.

here’s what I look at daily. Trend line for the moment continues downward.

Trying to answer my own question. Can’t swear this is right. But adding up EU countries total tests vs US it appears US has done approx 91 tests per 1000 population vs 58 per 1000 for EU. Or approx 57% more than EU.
So, yes, naturally US will find more infected people. Especially recently with staggering 500,000 tests per day capturing huge numbers of young, a or barely symptomatic positive results.
Hence, I watch daily deaths for stat that is important to me, at least.
YMMV.

cassidain said:

...
Hence, I watch daily deaths for stat that is important to me, at least.
YMMV.

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Stay tuned... The recently detected cases need to be given sufficient time to die. Deaths lag behind hospitalizations which lag behind cases.

The surge in case numbers for the US is evident in data presented graphically by Johns Hopkins. The seven day average in cases for the US increased by about 41% in the last week. Deaths associated with this would typically only become evident in 2 - 4 weeks.



Assessing the inadequacy vs. adequacy of the number of tests needs to include the current percentage of positive tests. If the value is above 5% (some stretch this to 10%), testing is considered inadequate to get control of an ongoing outbreak. The states that are driving the current surge have positive test rates in the order of 12% - 25% per data also available on the Hopkins site.

The US’s new surge in coronavirus cases, explained is a review article that some may find to be interesting.

Keep in mind that this pandemic is still in its early stages - the case number that you quote would place the US at about one-eighth of the level needed for herd immunity. People will indeed continue to contract the virus and deaths will continue to follow; numbers of both will continue to increase to levels determined by our collective response.

Anyone who remains interested in comparisons to the other illness that you bring up at this still early stage of the pandemic when US mortalities are 1.5 times the highest numbers that have been associated with the seasonal variety of flu may find this from the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy of UMinnesota of interest.

In any event, this thread seems to have served the purpose of its title and further discussion of these matters would probably belong in EE or on a nontravel web site. I would offer no objections if a mod chooses to delete my contribution to the shark jump.

cassidain said:

Trying to answer my own question. Can’t swear this is right. But adding up EU countries total tests vs US it appears US has done approx 91 tests per 1000 population vs 58 per 1000 for EU. Or approx 57% more than EU.
So, yes, naturally US will find more infected people. Especially recently with staggering 500,000 tests per day capturing huge numbers of young, a or barely symptomatic positive results.
Hence, I watch daily deaths for stat that is important to me, at least.
YMMV.

Click to expand...

This website has *some* helpful data, but I'd really like to see a page that genuinely rolls up all of the EU countries together. Quite a few countries from the EU are missing here. Of the ones present, it looks like we're generally in the middle of the pack on the graph not taking into account population sizes. At the end of the day, as you have noted, we cannot allow ourselves to be distracted by raw numbers. The only metric that really matters in this case are those measured on a per capita basis.

https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/testing/international-comparison

If the testing data you've quoted above is accurate, then we'd still be performing notably worse than the EU, but perhaps not quite as bad as what we see displayed on the earlier graph.

even the WaPo sees what demographic is driving the escalation of positive test results. the same demographic that is generally minimally affected.

Well, something seems to be going on in Texas and it isn’t just positive tests from kids

From the TMC (Texas Medical Center here in Houston) graph, the governor moved too quickly to "Phase 2", which allowed bars to open. Party on. In a rare admission, he regrets doing so. Our 25 year old son is now self-quarantining after spending the weekend in Austin. No symptoms, but better safe than sorry. Tried to get a test, but the wait was about six hours.

PeterLynn said:

From the TMC (Texas Medical Center here in Houston) graph, the governor moved too quickly to "Phase 2", which allowed bars to open. Party on. In a rare admission, he regrets doing so. Our 25 year old son is now self-quarantining after spending the weekend in Austin. No symptoms, but better safe than sorry. Tried to get a test, but the wait was about six hours.

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we shall see. But so far no explosion in deaths.

cassidain said:

we shall see. But so far no explosion in deaths.

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Repeating what was noted in post 13 in response to what is being repeated from post 11 - there has been insufficient time to see how many deaths occur in cases that have recently been diagnosed. I have no idea what you would consider an “explosion in deaths”.

Severe COVID typically occurs 7 days after symptom onset which occurs on average about 4 days after infection. Those who die generally do so after another 7 - 14 days.