USA drops Covid testing requirement for entry

This is kind of big news because like it or not, the United States has a great deal of influence over most of the rest of the world. They, in my mind, are a big part of the reason why so many other countries followed suit in shutting down and doing a lot of preventative maintenance, most of which has been shown to have been a total waste of time.

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I don't know how many times you have had your sinuses invaded by a giant Q-tip over the past 2 years but I have had it performed on me many more times than I would prefer. It seemed to kind of depend on who was performing the tests because a couple times it felt painless, other times it felt like the person conducting the test was trying to lobotomize me.

The Biden Administration, facing pressure from the travel industry, finally decided to scrap the test that required people get a test 24 hours before being approved for travel into the United States. The test was required of non citizens as well as citizens, and vaccination status played no part in whether or not someone had to get this test. Everyone had to get it if they wanted to come in. This step has been eliminated and it goes into effect on June 12th.

My personal thoughts on all of this is that it was a dumb idea to begin with and I am extremely happy to see it go. Many countries around the world already did get rid of this requirement and I feel as though the USA waited as long as they did just out of political stubbornness and because of the fact that the reason why many other countries ever implemented such a requirement in the first place was because of pressure from the United States.

I don't know how much this is going to affect anyone's lives because at least from my world, the budget-travel world, there isn't much of a reason to ever focus on the USA for travel plans. Our public transport is abysmal and despite the fact that we have the most expansive rail system of any country in the world, it isn't widely used for passenger travel. The last time I took a train that wasn't in a metropolitan area, it was more expensive than flying and took about twice as long as a car would. It's a mess and I wish they would just let it fail already so a private investor could make it into something good.

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_{Slow, dirty, and expensive. What a wonderful combination!}

Also, hostels and other cheap accommodation is damn near impossible to find in the USA and in many places guesthouses and hostel are illegal for some made up reason that in actuality just a way to protect the big hotels that have friends in government. Keep in mind that some parts of the USA for a while declared that AirBnB was "illegal" for similar BS reasons.

So I am not suggesting that anyone actually travel to USA for a vacation. There are so many places that are cheaper, more lovely, and safer all around the world. I am excited to see them finally get rid of this entry requirement though because it means that other countries that are still holding out with this will likely follow suit.

Unfortunately, proof of vaccination for non US citizens is still required to enter the United States. I think they are far from finished with forcing that on to as many people as possible.