The E.U. never even considered letting in U.S. travelers. That's how bad America's outbreak is.

https://news.yahoo.com/e-u-never-even-considered-111921023.html


Alexander Smith and Mo Abbas
,https://www.nbcnews.com/•July 2, 2020


People in Algeria, Rwanda, Uruguay, China and Canada are now free to travel to parts of Europe on vacation. Travelers from the United States aren't.

At first glance, it seems like the European Union has chosen a motley crew of 15 countries whose residents are now officially allowed nonessential travel into its member nations, which has been restricted since the middle of March.

In fact, the Europeans say, the exclusive club was devised using strict epidemiological criteria.

That's why the U.S. — which has the most coronavirus cases and deaths in the world — was nowhere near making the cut, according to three E.U. diplomats involved in the negotiations, who spoke anonymously because they weren't authorized to talk publicly about them.

"What do you think?" one of them deadpanned when asked whether Washington had been close to meeting the threshold.

"The U.S. was never going to make it," another said. "Just look at their coronavirus situation."

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The first bar countries had to pass was having the same rate of new coronavirus cases or lower as the European average, which stands at roughly 15 per 100,000 people over the past 14 days.

By contrast, the U.S. had around 145 cases per 100,000 people during that time, according to E.U. data — overshooting the threshold almost 10 times.

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