Given these dynamics, Covid-related travel policies would be better grounded in alternative framings and selectively implemented. More broadly, there is limited evidence for travels bans as a general policy solution. While there are data suggesting that they may have been helpful for delaying viral spread early in the pandemic, those data also suggest that other measures may have been more effective. This is particularly true given the strength of available data about travel bans. If fear of punishment encourages silence – particularly about issues that can affect the global community – we will all be worse off. For their part, South African leaders have equated the situation surrounding omicron to scapegoating and punishment for good science.
Ultimately, these disincentives can be strong deterrents to speak up about new variants or other concerning developments.
In the context of Covid-19, travel bans can have severe economic, social and health effects on target regions – consequences that may disproportionately affect low-to-middle-income countries and historically marginalized communities. Unfortunately, I have observed these dynamics far too often in my health policy and systems work, where well-intended policies can create harm by failing to fully consider downstream incentives. However obvious, some of the most foundational lessons about human behavior are that people respond to incentives, and misaligned incentives can prompt misaligned behaviors. Second, leaders should carefully account for long-term incentives created by travel ban policies. A problematic knock-on effect of the former: travel bans applied to a set of African countries but not those on other continents.
From a behavioral perspective, this situation belies a policy approach organized around a given framing (that omicron originated from Africa and spread to other regions should be contained) over others (that omicron already existed in multiple regions prior to first documentation in South Africa).
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