Costa Rica is ready to welcome back tourists, even a select few from some of the United States. But Costa Rica picked the wrong states, something seems awry.
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Costa Rica Re-Opens to Residents of Six US States
Big news out of one of the prettiest countries on earth this week, Costa Rica is once again opening its doors to American visitors; some American visitors.
There are some rules, as you might have guessed. Visitors can only fly into one of three airports, two in San Jose (SJO, SYQ) and one in Liberia (LIR.) Visitors must have a negative COVID-19 PCR test result within 48 hours of arrival (difficult to time) and carry $50,000 in insurance for their visit.
Residents of the following states are permitted to visit:
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Connecticut
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Maine
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New Hampshire
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New Jersey
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New York
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Vermont
State driver’s licenses and/or other residency identifiers qualify a tourist to enter.
Costa Rica Picked the Wrong States
Costa Rican officials claim that the choice was a medical one:
“In these six states there has been a very positive evolution of the pandemic and their epidemiological indicators are of high quality,” Gustavo Segura, Minister of Tourism of Costa Rica.
It wasn’t just the six US States added to the list (for entry on September 1st), a few other nations were welcomed back without segmented/provincial residency restrictions. Australia, Canada, China, the EU, Japan, New Zealand, Singapore, South Korea, Thailand, the UK, and Uraguay were allowed entry from August 19th.
Hmmm. Do all of those places have high-quality epidemiological indicators?
Costa Rica is happy to welcome, without limitation, six of the top ten most deadly countries in the world for COVID-19 patients. It limits the United States to those that reside in just six states which means allowing in 7/10 of the highest possible risk countries (with an asterisk for the US.) If just the states that were permitted entry into the US were part of this list, the US states chosen would be nearly the top of the list.
The US States with the lowest mortality per infection are:
| State | Cases per 100k People | Deaths per 100k People | Mortality Rate |
|---|---|---|---|
| Alaska | 622 | 4 | 1% |
| Wyoming | 610 | 6 | 1% |
| Montana | 585 | 8 | 1% |
| Oregon | 583 | 9 | 2% |
| New Hampshire | 521 | 31 | 6% |
| West Virginia | 502 | 9 | 2% |
| Guam | 463 | 3 | 1% |
| Hawai'i | 393 | 3 | 1% |
| Maine | 322 | 9 | 3% |
| Vermont | 246 | 9 | 4% |
You’ll notice that three of the states welcomed made the list, New Hampshire, Vermont, and Maine. But New York City is so high that it has its own classification according to the same data from the CDC. In fact, New York City alone has a 10% mortality rate, New Jersey and Connecticut 8% and 9% respectively.
And yet, we are to believe this is a medical decision reached scientifically?
What Costa Rica is Really Doing
It’s clear that Costa Rica is shopping for tourists, but not just any tourists, they want rich tourists. Other states have lower case numbers than those included in the permitted six states. In fact, some of those states currently have an infection rate above Costa Rica’s own. The below data is from John Hopkins via Google and demonstrates a relatively low incident rate with respect to Costa Rica’s 2018 population listed at 4.999MM. Of those infected in Costa Rica, mortality remains just about 1%.
Costa Rican officials are mixing two kinds of math. One set of figures say, “you can’t let other states in because there are too many cases.” I can get on board with that, it’s logical and speaks to keeping Costa Rica infections low. Had they picked low infection and low mortality rate states like Hawai’i and Montana, that would make sense.
But they didn’t.
The real math they are using is how much tourism revenue the country is losing. How else could one justify letting any Belgian into the country with an 8.6% mortality rate, but not all Americans, many of which have the same mortality rate as Costa Rica? If it’s based on the trend line of cases and mortality, other states would move to the front of the line ahead of New York and New Jersey. Pennsylvania had just 384 new cases on August 17th compared with a peak on April 9th of 1,989. Many of those new cases occurred around Philadelphia, a short distance from New York City.
It goes back to the Disney fallacy – just allow in those most likely to spend more money, exclude those that otherwise qualify but may spend less. I think it will backfire as it did for Disney World, but I can also understand it to a certain degree. What good is beating the virus (with an ever declining mortality and hospitalization rate) only to deal with mass unemployment and hunger because the businesses that support 12% of the population have gone under?
Conclusion
My family loved our trip to the Andaz Papagayo near Liberia in Costa Rica. It’s a beautiful resort in a beautiful country filled with wonderful people and great food. I’d love to visit again but I am not a resident of a qualifying state; our mortality rate in Pennsylvania is 6%, well below other countries allowed and some of the states chosen, but somehow not good enough. Further, if everyone that enters is required to carry substantial insurance and possess a negative COVID-19 test, wouldn’t that qualify everyone for entry that wants to visit?
I don’t necessarily have a problem with Costa Rica shopping the tourists it chooses to accept. But by limiting it to just six states, half of which have no epidemiological qualifier over others, it’s dishonest and disingenuous.
What do you think? Did Costa Rica choose the right states? If all entrants are COVID-19 negative and carry sufficient coverage, does it really matter where they reside? Do you agree that Costa Rica was dishonest about its motives?
They aren’t shopping for tourists, but you are certainly cherry-picking data. Costa Rica sounds like they are doing it correctly and looking at places that are currently doing well, which is a smart way to do it, rather than look at cases/deaths since it started, which is a poor way.
New York State is a great example of this – their overall numbers look awful (especially case fatalities) because of insufficient tests, not understanding how much the virus travels in air vs on surfaces, and sending COVID patients back to nursing homes. But their recent numbers show they are doing fairly well compared to most other states.
Go look at data from the past several weeks, and you’ll see that their selected regions/countries/states are overall doing well with it, albeit with some minor exceptions.
Why aren’t individual countries excluded from the EU that fail to meet the criteria? If everyone tests negative, why does it matter where they come from?
Because 1 Negative test still misses people who just picked up the virus within the past 2-3 days and haven’t turned positive yet. (You ideally need 2 tests a few days apart. Each of these criteria ( 1 negative test, coming from an area with low CURRENT infection rate) reduces risk but is not perfect. The combination of the 2 reduces risk even better.
It’s about the current infection rate – how infectious are people likely to be when they arrive. Last I heard Texas for example was in the 20% positive rate range. New York on the other hand currently has an infection rate of about 0.85% of those tested (and NY tested almost 100K folks in one day earlier this week – so they are actively looking for infections). Mortality is more an indicator of the quality of the healthcare system or very high infection rates which max out the healthcare system’s ability to care for the ill.
My sense is Costa Rica broadly got it right looking at current low infection rates (positive test rates amongst the population).
Hopefully all states come out of this soon and the balkinization approach becomes unnecessary soon.
This doesn’t really make sense. Sure, Belgium has a high mortality rate due to how it counts its deaths and the fact it counts assumed cases and not just confirmed cases in its death rate. But more importantly, the death rate isnt static. To get a better sense of who should be able to travel now you need to look at mortality in the last month or two, not throughout the whole pandemic (Belgian rates are high due to deaths counted in March-May, during the peak time of cases). And also the rolling 14-day average for new cases, which give a sense, particularly in western Europe, of how bad the current situation is in each country or region. I don’t know how these rates are calculated in the US, but using the mortality rate of the whole pandemic since the first cases makes no sense at all.
I don’t disagree with that, however, there hasn’t been a sudden surge in Montana. Why aren’t residents of that state included?
Montana was doing great until 6osh weeks ago when cases went up a decent amount. They are now at 10 cases per 100,000 people per day, a good bit higher than the 6 states Costa Rica is opening to.
I believe the 6 states listed currently have the lowest 7 day average cases per capita in the US.
You should alert the Montana DPHHS Kyle because their data shows a 50X surge in new cases that started in the last week of June new cases and has just started to recede in the past week or two, give them your data because they are obviously confused or stupid (or maybe they are DEEP STATE????).
At last count, 6,429 cases and only 54 new cases updated 8/23. Too many people here talking about Montana that don’t live here (yes, I actually live in the state). How many cases again in New York?
There are only 2 reasons for any recent “surges” in cases if you want to call it that here in Montana.
1: it got on the Reservation and once on the reservation, it spreads quickly.
2: It got into a senior care facility. We all know what happens in those cases.
Outside of those two instances, there have been absolutely no surges and if 54 new cases is earth shattering for the entire state? Then I don’t know what to tell you
Your data source choice makes no sense. Current infection numbers and spread rate are what is relevant. Of course it terrible how many people died, but why is that indicative of a currrnt situation?
Agree with the previous comment you’re cherry picking data, to make a rather weak (at best) point.
The data source was John Hopkins and the CDC as linked in the post.
Sure. But why have you selected death rate as your metric? Makes no sense and doesn’t help you make your point.
Kyle did you ever consider the possibility that maybe while NY started out with a high death rate, it’s data for months have shown it to be one of the safest states?
And that’s what matters now, not the overall death rate, but how many cases there are now, because what’s happening now is what is going to spread it.
To break it down simply, if you have 2 groups of people, both have 100 people total. If in group A, 50% of the people had the disease, but now only 1 person has it currently. Vs Group B where only 25% of the people had the disease, but currently 10 people have it, it’s a lot more risky to allow people from group B in b/c active cases are what matter.
So yes, I believe that Costa Rica studied the data, unlike you Kyle, with your dishonest framing of the narrative.
Dame – Thank you for reading and for sharing your opinion. Other states are in the same general range as the six permitted entry. Many of the countries permitted entry have higher infection rates, so that narrative doesn’t coincide. Further, if for example, Wales has a higher infection rate than England, that part of the country wasn’t excluded, just US states.
Possibly the worst statistic based article I’ve ever read. Do u not realize how well the tri state area has been doing numbers wise for at least the last month?
Great progress For the northeast but many states never encountered the same level of infection as the tri-State area. They don’t have the same progress to show because their numbers never ballooned.
That aside for a moment, how can they possibly let in the UK? The UK was one of the latest to encounter it, didn’t handle it exceedingly well and are still dealing with major outbreaks. Are we all happy to ignore those statistics too?
Today the UK reported roughly 1050 new cases and 6 deaths, the United States as a whole is approximately 5 times bigger population wise and suffered from almost 27000 new cases and 376 deaths.
Granted the UK did not handle it well at the beginning but now the statistics are much lower than the US. Both countries are running similar numbers of tests per 100,000 population so that cannot be used as the reason for higher cases. Deaths per 100,000 in a total sense are higher in the UK than the US (though there is cause to think the English system has been over reporting deaths as patients could never be considered cured of the virus and would be counted even hit by a bus if they tested positive at some point).
The “major” outbreaks as mentioned in your response are significantly smaller than the US and the UK is still pursuing a form of containment with localised lockdowns. In the same way a certain politician claimed NZ was suffering a major outbreak and the US did not want that there (it was a total of 9 cases the day he said it) these figures don’t hold up.
I think the article is flawed as others have stated by considering numbers as a whole over the entire pandemic rather than considering what the current situation is. If we do not accept that countries have made progress even if they handled it poorly at the beginning Italy’s, Spain’s, the UK’s and Belgium’s borders would never allowed to be reopened because at one point deaths were too high.
I find your post bizarre; if you look at estimated infection rates using the maps here https://covid19-projections.com/maps/ they picked the correct states. Montana has an estimated infection rate of 0.78% and growing
https://covid19-projections.com/us-mt
Looking at the site you referenced based on the same data set (John Hopkins) you’d also have to concede that Kansas, Colorado, Illinois, Pennsylvania and Michigan are excelling as well. The sharpest drop in mortality is Florida according to the data.
But if everyone has a negative COVID-19 test as we assume the tests are accurate (otherwise all these numbers are irrelevant anyway) then why does it matter at all. Costa Rica will factually certify that those people do not have it.
I agree with Mike, Chris M, Adrian and m. Over the last 14 days the UK has had a daily average of 11.5 COVID related deaths and just under 1100 new cases which is a lot better than most of the US states. Costa Rica has looked at trends and spots those countries that demonstrate the virus is under control. Although at this late summer stage I doubt too many people will risk a Costa Rican holiday against UK FCO advice (no travel insurance).
Stay away from statistical analysis Kyle, this article is horrible.
Did you have a substantive disagreement or you just didn’t care for the prose?
Nobody is going to list their disagreements with this article bc it’s so poor that it’s clear there’s no point in doing so
1. You’ve cherry picked data to make your points, that applies to most everything you’ve written here.
2. You’ve totally disregarded the glaringly obvious reason why they chose the six states, which is that those states have SUSTAINED low infection rates for more than 2 months.
3. Your conclusion is that Costa Rica chose the six states because they want rich tourists, and yet one third of the six (FYI Kyle, one third of six is two) states are not even in the top twenty for income per capita. If it’s about wealth, why not included Massachusetts? Or Michigan? or Pennsylvania. All have a lot more income per capita but….oh crap they also have 2x the new cases of Maine right now.
4. You are pointing to the NYC mortality rate of 10% as a reason why this list makes no sense (and NJ and CT), and yet somehow you are oblivious to the fact that the surge of mortality in those states was more than 3 months ago. That was April, but we are almost in September Kyle. Time matters. The mortality rate in NY dropped by a factor of about 100 from early April through late May, and it has stayed there ever since.
5. You resounded above that there has not been a surge in Montana, do you know what the lines on the graphs even mean? late April through late June MT had about 2-3 cases per day total, since mid July they’ve been averaging over 100 per day. Going from 3 to 100 in a span of about 4 weeks is a surge. The most recent per capita new case rate in Montana is more than 4x any other state on the list.
That’s as far as I am going, your bizarre logic doesn’t warrant a detailed dissection when the reasons for the list are so obvious. Sometimes not every decision is a complex conspiracy about politics or money Kyle, sometimes it’s just as simple as looking at a couple key metrics, and drawing a cutoff line through the list. Despite your mental gymnastics to try to demonstrate that you are smarter than everyone, that’s all that is happening here. Those six states have been at the bottom of the new case list for months, that’s why they are on the list. Sustained effectiveness.
No response to this Kyle? Maybe Costa Rica is part of the deep state!
Yeah this is kind of a mic drop series of responses
I agree with all of the other commentary that they absolutely picked the correct states. Based on testing positivity rate for the last 14 days, those 6 states were the lowest in the country: https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/testing/testing-positivity
Using the same data set, Washington State, and Puerto Rico has a 100% positive test result, Mississippi has a 39.7% positive test rate. Does that make you feel the data is more or less accurate?
Further, the other countries included don’t all have the same sub 1% range included in the data.
Recency of infection rate is more important than cumulative infections. An area is more likely to import cases with higher infection rates than their own.
If they wanted to cherry pick wealthy Americans, they left out the west coast
I acknowledge that as well, West Virginia and DC are among the lowest current incident rates in the country, yet they are excluded. Other countries they let in also have higher rates than those six states.
But again – if everyone tests negative before coming in anyway, why is it an issue?
You sound like an angry man who is pissed because his state (Florida?) isn’t on the list. Sundays are the worst day on this blog.
New York got the virus under control, and so NY-ers should be free to travel to other safe stops. Once your state does that, you can travel too.
Nate Nate – Pennsylvania is my home state (as mentioned in the article) and I clearly advocate for other states that are not my own.
But the question (that not one commenter has been able to answer yet) is if everyone tests negative, what does it matter where the person resides?
Your view of everyone testing negative only works if the test is 100% reliable. Many countries have elected to require a negative test some period before departure but you can still be infected between the test sample being taken and the arrival. Tests on arrival are better but still not 100% as you could be recently infected and not showing enough to test positive. So adding in a requirement to only come from places with low prevalence of the virus is just another step to reduce the chance that the virus takes hold in the country. Bringing in people from the entire US where the total number of cases is something like 5.8 million does not seem sensible. At least some of the states mentioned being allowed in are implementing their own restrictions on people from elsewhere in the US for the same reason.
@EJC – Obviously false positives and false negatives have been a constant issue with the testing and results. If the test can’t be trusted, then maybe the numbers used are unreliable too. I agree that tests on arrival are a better method than bringing in your own test, though countries that have implemented this are charging highway robbery and this shouldn’t be a cash grab. But it still doesn’t explain why all EU/Schengen countries (I have seen both listed) are permitted when many European countries exceed those same numbers, especially when regions and provinces could be segmented just as easy to fit the standards.
@kyle Can you explain which numbers exactly the EU countries are exceeding, it would be helpful to have some figures to compare?
One thing I do still find curious though from a ban perspective, pivoting slightly but the entire EU is still banned from entering the US whereas passengers from areas with worst outbreaks are allowed in Brazil and Mexico for example. I think we have to accept that all forms of restrictions are going to be imperfect.
I personally have no idea what the actual cost of research and manufacture is for these tests but I imagine given all the costs are similar no matter where you go for the test it might just be passing along the cost, I may be wrong of course.
I’ll admit that I didn’t know Penn was your home state. With all of your articles on Disney World annual passes, I figured you were a Floridian.
But you do take issue with NY, NYC, NJ and Conn being included on CR’s list, and your issue is that they have high mortality per infection rates. But your data source doesn’t look at the last 2 month period, after the tri-state area beat Covid. The virus is not spreading at a high rate in the tri-state area, so the risk to CR that a tri-state traveler will falsely test negative (because of a recent infection) and then bring Covid to CR is much lower compared to a Floridian or Arizonian traveler.
I feel like it should be well-known that the tri-state area has beaten Covid for now. But it appears you weren’t aware?
Haha, this is spot on! When I first read the states I couldn’t stop laughing because they “picked” the absolute worst ones, LOL. The only plausible explanation is that they must have consulted with Fauci, Birx, Obama & Biden beforehand.
This is funny because it won’t work, and that’s not how America rolls.
If you want to open to the us you open to the us, I guarantee you no airline will be allowed to discriminate based on state, and turning anyone away will be met with complete withdrawal of flights, period.
Math is hard. Especially when it’s dated.
Of course they went for the right states. They’re going for the monied end of the market, and trying to avoid the brain-dead , cheap-charlie, drug/booze-addled youth segment. What’s more likely: importation of community transmission via the wanton antics of marauding , maskless millennials or through a high-spending couple from NYC? They got it right…
Bingo! Paolo, you are spot on.
Or, to put it another way: they don’t want knuckle-dragging, reality-denial, orange-hat-wearing moronic a-holes who refuse to act responsibly and behave like adults. It’s not complicated.
Barely keeping your political biases out of this one, Kyle. The Northeast is on the list because we are, by far and away, demonstrably the only region of the U.S. that has COVID-19 under any kind of control.
I’m not sure if Kyle is a professional troll but this is another spectacularly bad take, even for him.
The question is not what was the COVID profile months ago, it’s what is it now. The current positivity rate in New York is as low as a quarter of 1 percent. It is, by far, the safest region in America vis-a-vis a COVID threat. The curve is beyond flat. There are some rural states that might qualify but they would likely require at least one connecting flight. CR is wisely picking and choosing based on current infection rates.
Flights departing Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Connecticut would also require a connection and it doesn’t actually matter where the persons originate from, rather where they are residents (another flaw in Costa Rica’s approach.) Many of the countries in Europe that are permitted exceed Costa Rica’s own rate but were not excluded which is also contrary to your interpretation of their intention.
If travelers test negative, why does it matter?
It matters because if you caught the disease through community spread the day you tested, you will test negative, and then bring the disease to CR.
So CR is right to only want travelers from states with low community spread.
Do you understand community spread?
Unfortunately they are really making it difficult to enter/exit with only 5X/week from/to CR~US. Wonder which airline and hub city will get the 5 flights
Per OMMAT
Most of the CT population is only an hour or so from LGA/JFK, just so you know
The European Union bloc also has the highest cumulative deaths for Bubonic Plague in the history of the disease. Maybe they should never be allowed to travel again. Great logic, Kyle.
Lol, many member EU nations (and regions within those nations) have a higher 14-day trailing infection rate than Washington DC for example which is just over 1.5% yet are permitted entry. Does that seem logical to you? Can you explain the inspiration behind that decision?
We have a week booked at the end of January for the family.
The Five flights a week could be an issue.
The 48hr test is fine – both my daughters have been tested (PRC) after contact with positive individuals, test results next day.
Which bodes well for a family trip to Alaska for a week next month (fast test turn around) requires PRC within 72hrs.
The six states could be an issue – I do question criteria – hopefully that is loosened up in the coming months as well as number of flights.
Oregon has about 1M less people than CR has had fewer postive tests than CR but slightly higher number of deaths than CR.
The insurance is only about $12 a day PP.
Costa Rica consistently been considered the safest/cleanest country in Central America, hopefully COVID19 hasn’t changed that.
I am curious as to how much of a “ghost town” with regards to toursim, eaterys, etc.
I know from previously traveling as a Western during economic downturns or in the absence of toursist, the level of extra attention or soliciting of business by street vendors, etc can be overwhelming in developing nations.
Kyle, with all due respect, it’s absurd to use past deaths as a metric for current disease prevalence. Bergamo, Italy had one of the most deadly epidemics on the planet, but now it has like 60-70% antibody prevalence, so it’s now one of the safest cities on the planet. The same is arguably true of New York.
honestly, this feel like a troll article. i’m dumber for having read it.