The issue I will address is how easy it is for viruses to spread with the current regulations on international travel, as shown with the Covid-19 outbreak. It will aim to discuss precautions on travel that could be made to lessen the spread of future pandemics. It is an intervention on current policy discussion as it does not directly focus on coronavirus, as lots of policy in a similar area is specifically targetted towards it. Rather, this issue brief is trying to target how to stop the spread of outbreaks in the future, so that we do not have a situation like we currently have again, by examining what allowed the coronavirus to spread so rapidly and understand how we can stop that. There may be some overlap, as improving travel regulations could also help with diminishing the current spread of Covid-19, however, it intends to primarily focus on stopping future outbreaks.

I will discuss the exigence by using the recent kairotic example of Covid-19. By describing how the virus itself has symptoms plaguing our society, such as the quarantines and shortages of goods, it shows the nature of the problem itself. From there, I will discuss how these issues could have been preventable had the virus not been allowed to spread as rapidly as it did, which is why we need to work on improving the international travel regulations directly. The issue brief should be able to show its exigence through the recent example of all the ongoing problems that were caused due to our inability to prevent the spread of coronavirus.

The cause category I intend to focus on is inadvertent. As a result of the poor hygiene in airports, and lack of screening for easily spreadable infections, the coronavirus was able to rapidly reach many countries and infect many people. This falls into the inadvertent category because a lot of the hygiene-related issues are caused by a lack of awareness of individuals, not cleaning up after themselves or practicing unhygienic behavior allowing for germs to spread. Furthermore, the lack of screening still fits in the category since it is something airports and other forms of international travel have the ability to do, yet don’t due to the costs it would require to add or some other external reason. Generally, the spread of viruses results from unintentional behavior, as it isn’t logical for most people to intentionally want to get themselves and those around them sick, but it also isn’t entirely accidental as it is often preventable, thus not solely determined by luck and fate.

Mandates are the policy instrument I would intend to use. I think this would be best since imposing punishments for breaking rules would be the best way to discourage the behavior. For example, mandates would discourage people from intentionally traveling with spreadable sickness, and could force more people to clean up. Inducements could potentially be useful, but many people already practice healthy behavior and the spread of viruses is more dependent upon extremely bad practices by a few people, targetting the few people with punishments would be more effective. System changes would be the other policymaking type I would focus on. The main thing I think this would be useful for is to force airports around the globe to have greater cleanliness, by having regularly used objects (machines used to check-in, everything customers touch on the plane, all doorknobs, etc) be regularly disinfected, and enforcement of face masks and other precautionary measures for employees for staff on the plane, to prevent them from getting any illness and passing it onto other passengers.