WASHINGTON The way President Donald Trump tells it, his China travel ban was a gutsy move against the coronavirus that pretty much shut it down coming in from China, stopped it, and put the deadly virus very much under control.

Which of course raises the question: Why, then, does the U.S. have 61,167 coronavirus cases and 849 deaths as of Wednesday afternoon , with both numbers on the rise?

Jeremy Konyndyk, who worked in the Obama White House on the response to the 2014 Ebola outbreak, compared Trumps move to Frances famously useless fortifications against the Nazis in World War II.

The travel ban was his Maginot Line, the false sense of security that in fact left us hugely vulnerable to attack, Konyndyk said. Because it meant we didnt man our other defenses.

Global health experts agree that blocking travel from China made sense, particularly given the Chinese governments attempts to cover up the severity and extent of the disease there. But they also agree that Trump should have simultaneously made it a top priority to set up an extensive testing regime to understand the spread of the virus and to equip hospitals and first responders with the ventilators, respirators and other medical supplies they now need as the disease inevitably spreads around the country.

Once the virus is introduced to a community, unless it is contained it will grow exponentially. And that is what we are seeing now, said William Hanage, an associate professor of epidemiology at Harvard. Travel bans dont help once the spread has already happened.