one traveller’s experience in the current virus crisis

From Facebook

Amos Libby about Trump’s so-called medical checks:

“This post is about is the US government’s reckless and dangerous response to the virus that I personally witnessed first during my connection in London [from India] and then after arriving at Boston Logan airport last night.
Before departure in London on a Boston-bound BA flight, gate agents delivered several contradictory alerts regarding who was allowed to board and who would be admitted to the United States after the Trump regime’s travel ban. Security and agents were literally googling Trump’s statements on their phones and audibly discussing what it meant, expressing their bafflement and remarking that they had no one to call to clarify. They told the waiting passengers that the US government instructions were unclear and they were going on their best guess of who should be allowed to board.
I was allowed to board, and after arriving in Boston I passed through passport control with hundreds of other travelers. Instead of being waved through after the formalities as usual, the officer kept my passport and ordered me to stand against the wall with several hundred other people. CBP officers walked through the masses of passengers with massive stacks of passports, dropping them on the floor and swearing. The agents flipped through the passports and screamed out names over the noise of the passengers and arrivals.
If you were lucky enough to hear your name, you were ordered to follow the officer to roped-off holding areas in physically tightly-packed groups of about 50-60. We were given sheets of paper (no pens) and ordered to write our names, addresses and flight numbers. There was a space for where a clinician was to write our current core body temperature and place for our signature.
Staff in full hazmat gear circulated around yelling things under their masks that no one could understand and we just stood there like this packed tightly together for over 2 hours.
Nearby staff in protective gear stood at long tables with pamphlets and hand-held thermometers (sitting on the table, not in the staff’s hands). At one point more staff approached each of us, screamed our names, and scribbled something near the space on our forms where our temperature should be, gave us two pamphlets, and told us we were free to go.
The thermometers were never used and we were asked no questions at all. Again: absolutely NO ACTUAL MEDICAL CHECKS OCCURRED ON ANY PASSENGERS.
For over 2 hours hundreds of us were packed tightly together during what is being billed by the Trump administration as a preventative measure against a virus that is spread in crowds.
This what the US government is doing to “protect” us from coronavirus. This is why is it so important that we do what we can as individual communities to flatten the curve of infections and give medical services a chance to cope with the virus over time instead of all at once. We can’t count on the clownish and dangerous policies of the Trump regime to help us. What I saw last night can only make it worse. Stay healthy, friends.”
(feel free to copy and share; tagging is fine)