'Total Pandemonium': Trump’s Abrupt European Travel Ban Sows Chaos For Americans

LOADING ERROR LOADING Leah Rachel von Essen was asleep at a Spanish Airbnb in the early hours of Thursday morning, local time, when the Trump administration’s surprise European travel ban quickly sent her packing. On Wednesday night, as doctors and public health officials worried about the U.S. health system’s woefully inadequate testing abilities in the face of a nationwide coronavirus outbreak, President Donald Trump announced that flights from Europe to the U.S. would be halted for one month starting Friday, with an exception for flights from the U.K. The EU said coronavirus, which has devastated parts of Italy after sickening tens of thousands in China, “is a global crisis, not limited to any continent and it requires cooperation rather than unilateral action.’’ The Trump administration’s move also came as a shock to the travel industry, Association of Flight Attendants president Sara Nelson told HuffPost. “On the flip side,” Nelson said, “we had stories of passengers who were buying $25,000 tickets from Europe because they were so concerned about getting back to the United States before any sort of travel ban would be in place.” The industry’s problems are far from over.