Not what I’d call protection
Our single, pre-flight COVID test is as effective as wearing half a raincoat.
John Patt, Koloa
Pandemic solutions
1. Make the after-tests free to all. Not everyone who comes here can afford $160 with a “carrot” of a credit to spend at a local spot. My daughter is coming with grandkids for Thanksgiving and can barely afford the airfare, much less tourist activities. She wants to get second test for the whole family but cannot afford it. Anyway, the tests don’t seem to be all that accurate. Could be why only 2% of tourists are taking the test (duh).
2. Budget deficits: If Ige can simply lockdown by executive edict, perhaps he could also announce recreational pot is now legal in Hawai‘i, thereby reaping the bounty of tax revenue as have other cities and states all over the U.S. Reducing government workforce by early retirement and bonuses to leave would help. The pot revenue could help fund their exits and pension plans. Most residents cannot afford any rise in already-high taxes and cost of living in Hawai‘i.
3. Traffic: Get rid of all or most traffic lights and build roundabouts instead. Add more ingress and egress from commercial locations. Have you tried to get out of Safeway now that traffic is back? Try it on Sunday morning with a big line waiting to get out and no traffic on main road. Decentralize everything, stagger work hours and school hours. Limit driving cars except for work and essential employees to every other day by last license plate number. Even on one day, odd on next. Remember the gas shortages when this was done?
4. COVID: As the media shouts the statistics hourly as if we are in a baseball game, doing their best to promulgate fear, keep in mind we are now about 250,000 dead in U.S. which is about half the yearly deaths from cigarettes, which remain legal. Those who control the media control the lies.
The inmates are running the asylum.
Michael Wells, Moloa‘a
COVID math is terrifying
The first reported death in the United States from COVID-19 was on Feb. 6, 2020. Since then, 288 unimaginably tragic days have passed and the baleful microbe has claimed over 250,000 American lives.
Dare to average that out and the calculator will cite that 860 people have died each day. To put that number in perspective, a Boeing 737 carries 189 passengers. If four crashed daily with no survivors, there would still be 104 less casualties than those attributed to the coronavirus.
Even so, nobody would want to board a Boeing 737 because of the rational fear that they would be one of the unlucky ones. As a husband and a father, I am terrified of the coronavirus.
That fear keeps me away from my parents, isolated from friends, and puts a mask on my face. I wish more Americans would view the unpleasant emotion as a necessary motivator, not a character flaw.
Andrew Ginsburg, Southport, Connecticut
