The issue with the 2020 travel ban was indeed that it was for a single country only (later added Iran too), and AFAIK only included direct flights, which kinda defeats the point. You have to go all in or nothing.
Italy only banned direct flights from China which was indeed worse than useless, but the US travel ban was based on whether someone had been in China in I think the last 14 days and most subsequent travel restrictions have been modelled on that one.
