The International Air Transport Association (IATA) says travel restrictions have little to no long-term impact on the spread of the coronavirus. Do you agree with its view?

This statement is obviously nonsense. How did the Omicron variant get into Japan? Via passengers entering by air. How di it get to the UK? Air passengers from South Africa. Simple, air travel spreads the virus.

What they really mean is that the spread is inevitable UNLESS there is a permanent ban on air travel which would be rather excessive. So what they should be saying is...

Of course air travel is the most efficient way to spread the virus internationally but it a complete ban on international air travel is not desirable considering the risks and damage.

restricting travel does help prevent the spread of diseases, you don't have to be an infectious disease expert to know that and you also know that pathogens can travel through packages as well. I'm betting that the IATA is just saying this to encourage people to travel again.

Agree with the 2 above posters

Of course the contrary, they are the main and by far quickest global spreaders, who else? All island nations and the virus spreading on other continents others than Eurasia plate are the visible and obvious proves for everyone, aren’t they still?

Short term, yes. Long term, no. Once the virus is in a country closing borders is useless. It’s better to concentrate on testing and vaccination but these, of course, are expensive and closing borders is an easy way for spineless governments to look as though they doing something.

There were lots of economically and socially damaging travel blocks and they made no difference. Each dominant variant spread globally, very quickly. After which, travel blocks were a medical irrelevance.

Most European nations are open again, with no restrictions, in many cases, no testing and no quarantine. The difference between the approaches of Europe and Austral/asia is not a medical one, but a political one.

So, what is the difference between ethnic Japanese testing negative and being allowed to run a marathon together, or Olympic athletes and foreign tourists testing negative before getting on a plane to Japan? No medical difference. Just a political one.

We will never find out to what extent Covid was a tool for government manipulation, but the more obvious examples of it are now evident, as some countries have ended restrictions and others cling on to them.

Any travel or No travel.

Since ‘No travel’ isn’t going to happen, we are stuck with travel, if we hadn’t noticed.

Blood transfusions have little to no "long term" effect on the pathology of hemophilia as well, the thing is that in the short term the situation can be completely different.

Travel restrictions can be very effective in giving enough time to a country to put forward measures and strategies for the controld of the pandemic when it inevitably enters, but it can also be a useless measure when the country that is trying to isolate already have rampant transmission of every identified variant already.

Well, they would wouldn't they.

This statement is obviously nonsense. How did the Omicron variant get into Japan? Via passengers entering by air. How di it get to the UK? Air passengers from South Africa. Simple, air travel spreads the virus.

Actually you are mis-representing what the statement says. It doesn't say "The virus was not spread by air travel", it says "travel restrictions have little to no long-term impact on the spread of the coronavirus." These are two different things. Of course air travel has allowed the virus to spread faster and farther than it would otherwise, but I think the statement is correct - air travel restrictions were a short term measure that really haven't had any long term impact on the spread of the virus.

I voted no above, but looking at the WHO's world figures again and rethinking this, the answer for me may be yes, certainly as this relates to Japan. It is surely time for the government to think about scrapping many of the measures in place as no longer meaningful. (Unless they have insider information about some new and terrible variant that we are all unaware of.)

I think the flow of people coming in and going out because of travel may cause a spread of virus to some extent, however, it does not lead to a long term effect. On my observation, how each person behave is more important than the number of people move throughout the world. As we see the lockdown has a limitation for a complete prevention from the virus, restriction does not necessarily work perfectly in this situation. Therefore, I think each of every one of us should be considerate and sensible enough to seek the best way to protect ourselves from the virus.

At this stage of the pandemic, I agree. The train has left the station (or plane in this case). No putting the virus back in the bottle now.

Traveling spreads undetected Corona virus esp the BA2 kind.