On January 28th, 2022 the CDC warned against travel to 22 destinations due to the Omicron variant. These countries were considered a level four: very high risk because of rising Covid numbers in these countries. Some countries in this level were Israel, Australia, Egypt, Argentina, and Uruguay. This now makes the level four category contain over 100 countries and they also added another 20 countries into level 3: high including Uganda, Kuwait, Jamaica, Costa Rica, and Cuba. The CDC recommends that all Americans postpone unnecessary travel to these countries especially if not vaccinated.
This is important because the United States restricting travel to a lot of these countries have an economy based on travel and tourism. For example two countries that are on the fourth level are the British Virgin Island and the Bahamas. Specifically in the British Virgin Islands almost a third of the employment in the country is do to travel and tourism. Also more than half of their GDP comes from Travel and tourism. These types of countries and territories will be hit hardest with the new travel restrictions, and that a large part of the people who travel to these countries and territories come from the United States.
This relates to international relations because it’s an democratic state trying to protect the lives of their citizens. As we learned in class as the world moves into the stage of democracy they tend to value lives more. For example the amount of American lives lost in conflict decreases as you look at conflicts the US has gotten involved in. This is a prime example of how if the government doesn’t try to protect the lives of its people they will find themselves not getting reelected.