Brad,
There's no backdoor to the Schengen zone for an American tourist. Europe is trying to re-open to the world while avoiding future shocks and part of that is allowing travel from where covid19 is under control. It is a serious disease so on the one hand you have tourist earnings (smaller fraction of the economy, varies by country it's 9.7% in France but part of that are European tourists) but on the other you have the rest of the economy to think about. In any case, Europe isn't completely tourist-free as it's the summer holidays now and Europeans are traveling again. We will be going on vacation in the coming week. H1N1 isn't COVID19. It's good you had COVID19 and had a good outcome. Many others would like to avoid getting it in the first place or have our health care systems stretched again, leading to poor outcomes.
Although it is misleadingly presented on some sites (even official ones such as the French diplomatic website) as being travel to the EU from one of 15 countries being allowed, the official guidance which you can find on re-open europe is residents of those 15 countries. So unless you are a resident of Algeria, Australia, Canada, Georgia, Japan, Morocco, New Zealand, Rwanda, South Korea, Thailand, Tunisia, Uruguay and China you won't be getting in unless you meet one of the exceptions (European resident/citizen, spouse/children of European resident/citizen, covid19 worker, flight crew in transit, valid visa holder, etc). Algeria is being removed from that list and Morocco is likely to be removed if things continue how they're going. Serbia and Montenegro were already removed. There are also many internal EU restrictions on movement depending on where you're coming from and where you are going to. It's in the interests of all member states and the third-country travel allowed states to continue to keep covid19 under control to maintain travel between these countries, else they will find their nationals restricted from entry and also to avoid disruption to their economies.
As far as Morocco specifically, American tourists are not allowed to enter Morocco so you wouldn't be let into Morocco in the first place unless you are a Moroccan citizen or resident. As an American, you also need a PCR test performed within the last 48 hours to board a plane to Morocco if you are resident in Morocco. Then there's this problem mentioned by the US Embassy Morocco with trying to use a layover or even residency in Morocco as a way to get into Europe:
Blockquote U.S. passport holders are not allowed to enter the European Union unless they qualify for an exception under European rules – no matter how long they have been in Morocco. Americans traveling back to the United States will likely be permitted to transit a European airport, however as long as the European travel restrictions remain in place, U.S. citizens will not likely be permitted to leave the airport. Travelers with additional questions about European entry rules should contact the embassies or the border control authorities of the European country they wish to visit and/or review information on U.S. embassy webpages in the transit countries.
Blockquote
So you can probably transit from Morocco between flights but probably won't be let out of the airport. For France, I would put that as definitely not allowed outside of the airport. You would likely run into similar problems coming from any of the other non-European countries whose *residents * are on the travel allowed list. There's also the issue of airlines not wanting to take you since they would need to return you if you were denied entry. Individual countries that decided to ignore the guidance banning American tourists on any scale could end up with internal EU travel restrictions and pressure, like Portugal did for a time on a limited scale.
Susan,
Portugal hasn't been an option for awhile now unless you fall into one of the categories that are similar to the rest of europe.
