Preventing Kaua‘i County from putting into place strong rules protecting our communities’ health and safety from the risks of expanded COVID infections is the objective of HB1286.
Though the passage of HB1286 also prevents Maui, Honolulu and Hawai‘i counties from doing the same, it was introduced specifically to stop Kaua‘i County from making our own rules.
This is the unvarnished truth.
Tourism-industry leaders complained that “visitors were confused about the rules” and Kaua‘i County’s rules were at the root of that confusion. Rather than try to better explain those rules to visitors, the industry went to their friends at the Legislature, specifically Speaker of the House Scott Saiki, and asked/demanded that the right for Kaua‘i to have its own rules be taken away.
And voila! HB1286 was born. Such is the power of big business.
There are three key elements to this proposal:
• It’s based on the premise that a universal COVID travel policy is best for the travel industry;
• The policy that is proposed in HB1286 requires each incoming traveler to have “a negative test result upon arrival from a state-approved COVID-19 test administered within 72 hours before departing from the final leg of departure.” AND allows “the incident commander” (not the governor, the mayor, or the director of the state Department of Health) to determine who can be “automatically exempt from the pre-travel testing requirements and mandatory self-quarantine…” The present incident commander is Maj. General Kenneth Hara, Hawai‘i adjutant general and director of the Hawai‘i Emergency Management Agency;
• If passed into law, HB1286 will prevent any county government from having stricter rules: “this Act shall take precedence over all conflicting statutes concerning this subject matter and shall preempt all contrary laws, ordinances, rules, orders, or proclamations adopted by the state, a county, or any department or agency thereof.”
All three of these elements are, of course, debatable.
Most will likely agree that, yes, a uniform travel policy would be best. However, which policy is best and whether it should prevent a county from having stronger provisions are the key questions.
The policy now being proposed in HB1286 is woefully inadequate if the goal is to minimize the spread of travel-related coronavirus infections in Hawai‘i. The medical community is unanimous in agreement that a single test 72 hours prior to arrival is insufficient protection if the goal is to keep COVID infection and death rates as low as possible.
A second test is especially important when taking into consideration the rise of new and more dangerous strains such as the “Kent coronavirus variant” that U.K. experts have said may be up to 70% more infectious and about 30% more lethal than other variants.
The third policy element, that of “preempting” the right of a county to have stricter health protections, is on its own sufficient reason to oppose HB1286. This is yet-another example of the majority of the Legislature who live in Honolulu thinking that what’s best for Honolulu is best for everyone else, regardless of where they might live.
State laws should be a “floor, not a ceiling.” If any county wants to pass stronger laws, rules or regulations that reflect its particular circumstances, it should be allowed to do so. If the residents don’t agree, they can direct their voices to the County Council and mayor, and/or they can elect new county leaders. If visitors don’t like it and/or they are “confused,” then perhaps they would be better served by spending their vacation days in Honolulu. Or, better yet, perhaps non-essential travelers should abide by the CDC travel guidelines which are: “The CDC recommends that you do not travel at this time.”
A reminder for those who might require one: This is an opinion column and I am, of course, simply expressing my opinion.
HB1286 has passed out of its first committee, and on Feb. 12 a second reading floor vote was held, with Representatives Kapela, Nakamura, Takumi, Tokioka, Wildberger voting no, and Representatives DeCoite, Ganaden, Har, McKelvey, Okimoto, Perruso and Ward voting aye with reservations (not quite a no but indicating they don’t really like this measure). Representatives Eli, Gates and Hashimoto were absent and excused. All other representatives voted yes.
The next step in the process is a House Judiciary and Hawaiian Affairs Committee hearing scheduled for Wednesday, Feb. 17 at 2 p.m. (testimony is due 24 hours in advance).
Please take a moment, read HB1286, “register” at the top of the page, and offer your testimony at: bit.ly/37dddPw.
•••
Gary Hooser is the former vice chair of the Democratic Party of Hawai‘i, and served eight years in the state Senate, where he was majority leader. He also served for eight years on the Kaua‘i County Council, and was the former director of the state Office of Environmental Quality Control. He serves presently in a volunteer capacity as board president of the Hawai‘i Alliance for Progressive Action and is executive director of the Pono Hawai‘i Initiative.
I hope HB1286 passes for the sake of everyone on Kauai that needs life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Not to mention a job so they can earn money to have food to eat, clothes to wear and a roof over their head
There has only been one alleged COVID death in Kauai. One too many but unfortunately death is a part of life and we are all going to meet our maker one day.
Kauai’s performance in preventing COVID is remarkable but excessive and has lead to devastating results and many more deaths than the virus.
Gary – Stop with the fear mongering. Kauai is turning into a welfare State. Great leaders look for solutions that will work for everyone. Kamakazi has put his head in the sand and his plan is more Federal Welfare. I could be on board if the gold spoon was taken out of his mouth and the city council volunteered to give up its pay and stand in line at the food banks, (not for support but because they need to eat).
10 months ago I was on board with the lock down, 3 months ago when the island opened and then closed I was still on board. A negative test pre- boarding with a vaccination now needs to be the path to re-open. Stop with the medical science of which you know nothing about.
You guys have done enough. I’m not sure how your income is earned but we need travelers desperately. And kawakarma has done enough to kill off small business on kauai. We are going to pass this because it’s the right thing to do for the majority. People gotta work.
I am an owner in Kauai. My wife and I visit about 3 times a year. My question is, how many visitors participating in the bubble taking the post covid test after 72 hours have been found positive. I have seen no data (numbers) showing how many. My guess is very few if any The pre test BEFORE BOARDING a plane to Kauai should be enough.
For once Mr. Hooser and I agree on something. Make your voice heard, submit your testimony more than 24 hours prior to the hearing!
We just recently traveled to Oahu from Kauai- the Safe travels process was a bit confusing- they could make some changes to clarify the process- {so visitors and residents can go through the process with clear options available for all ] it is very “Oahu Centric”. Yes we need to keep our protections for Kauai in place…
Gary, when you wanted stricter rules against westside Ag poison use, you were against the state saying Kauai could not have rules separate from the state rules.
Now you’ve flipped flopped to satisfy your own agenda.
Save lives? Is that your BARK ! vs. Destroying most of the businesses and their families and same for their employees and their families of Kauai ! Economic ruin for the people who supported you in the offices you were elected to. Destroying your friends is like being a Traitor. Are there other elected people from the past or present who are being traitors to those that supported and elected them.
Well listen up, being a former this and that you should know better.
The young and old working their whole life for their businesses, businesses that are supporting multiple family generations, and just like like his parents that owned Big Save Super Markets and supported the Mayor and his family until he sold sold out for a massive profit and also sold other family holdings leaving him IMMUME to the financial disaster he has single handedly condemned this single island to with an unnecessary QUARANTINE.
Mayor, we love you brother, and as mayor, good job, but either yourself and/or your medical and staff advisors are steering you to lead us down the path to ruin, from which there will be for too many Kauai people…NO RETURN. Damned to a broken business, destroyed finances, broken family, maybe suicides, divorces, lost homes, rental house, jobs, car, truck, and sanity, family youth leaving for the mainland perhaps children gone forever, parents and grandparents forlorn, needing younger generation’s help but now sadly seniors on their own after raising their children to be born, and raised and thinking they would be living their lives on Kauai.
This needless and undeserved QUARANTINE for the same annually updated flu and its naturally mutated variants, that have infected most of the world’s population year after year, since forever ago, wherein the healthy people who contracted the disease, about 98%, were all asymptomatic or only had mild symptoms.
Mayor here is a challenge for you, and same for Gary, ask your advisors medical or otherwise to tell you word for word, Chapter and Paragraph, and same to you Gary, describe the exact process of the immune system from antigenic virus exposure, to antibody production at 10,000 antibodies per second by untold millions of plasma cells, to the wiping out of virus, to immunity (describe it) to how non Contagion occurs, describe how we get to Herd Immunity. Be sure to emphasize the lock and key mechanism of antibody/antigen, and why Merck Pharmaceutical decided to pull their 2 dangerous vaccines from the market and recommend people get the natural flu and develop their own natural immunity and become non contagious. If you and your people can’t recite their immune process and it’s history dating back 550 million years our cousin vertebrates, then you guys do not know what you are stalking about.
And describe the vaccine you have so much blind faith in. What are the ingredients injected into people and how does that work to become and immune and non-contagious and part of Herd Immunity.
Explain why Pfizer Moderna injection is not allowed to be called a vaccine by the FDA, and why it must be called an Experimental Gene Therapy, and what are mystery genes injected into you going to do to you and the people in years to come after they have Genetically Modifed you. Gary you should be an expert on this since you were so Anti GMO in our food and fields.
Describe why Pfizer Moderna’s attempted “vaccine”was rejected by the FDA and not allowed to even be called a vaccine; and was instead re-routed to be called an EXPERIMENTAL untested, Gene Therapy, also untested.
Manmade untested laboratory Genes injected into your body, monitored at the Injection Station for a watch over you glimpse of a 15 minutes wait time, when some vaccine victims die within that period or enter anaphylactic shock, when normal vaccines take 2 years to test on animals.
Besides vaccines and gene therapy do not achieve human Immune System Bio-Identical matching of antibodies to the virus, thus no immunity or becoming non-contagious or being part of Herd Immunity occurs.
How so you feel about the AstraZeneca vaccine being injected into you with Chimpanzee virus…
This is scientific heresy with an uneducated pseudo scientist, the mayor, Making decisions for thousands of people in his salvation attempt to save a few elderly who must first qualify in order to die allegedly from the virus and/or its variants.
In order to die while also having a potentially inaccurate positive Covid test, you MUST ALREADY HAVE, and proven by daily statistics announcements on Oahu’s Star Bulletin News, of verifiable, PRE-existing self abusive and SELF INDUCED, chronic degenerative End-of-Life Diseases (Obesity, Diabetes, Heart, Stroke, Vascular, Hypertension, Cancers, Alzheimer’s, and Liver, Lung, & Kidney) diseases; complicated by usually at least 2 toxic and/or lethal prescription drugs for each disease, often helping to perpetuate those diseases for 2, 3, & 4 decades earlier.
And if you test positive out of curiosity and you have been positive for 2 weeks or more, then that means you have have naturally acquired the Covid virus or its natural mutated variant; and that means you have already developed your own natural immunity, and you have naturally become NON-Contagious, and have naturally become part of Herd Immunity, meaning, you cannot get the same virus or variant again, nor spread it to others, and by way of Herd Immunity will be part of eliminating the virus or variant from the population. We need you, and we need you healthy and asymptomatic for your benefit and ours.
Yes some people have been taking their often changed prescription drugs for even 40 years, seeing as to die with Covid you need by proven statistics to be between 70 and 109 years.
Elderly, Self inflicted diseases caused by diet and lifestyle abuse, decades of abuse of prescription drugs, and only with those people having those qualifications are you able to die with Covid, even if it is a false positive polymer test, whose own inventor claims the test is not intended for testing the existence of virus. Meaning if you die with a false test, it means you died from your pre-existing diseases and your abuse of prescription drug.
Let’s not forget that health and practicing it every day is the alternative to disease. Live Healthy with active Longevity or die early with disease and prescription drugs.
Why is it everyone who dies with Covid is under Medical Care? Perhaps the medical disease route is not the correct route to take.
Perform Health on yourself, or inflict yourself with Diseases.
We absolutely do not need a Quarantine…we need Healthy People.
Why are so many emergency room frontline medical doctors claiming the HydroxyChloroquin medication is getting rid of the virus diseases in a day in so many patients that it is patently clear the HydroxyChloroquin is working to save people from the Covid virus.
End the Quarantine today, Derek, if you really want to save Kauai.
Mahalo GARY for your thoughtful insights on why the Bill HB1286 is inadequate. I agree with you on all major points. Please do all you can to see that this bill does not pass.
Bev Olsen, Lihue
This is in regard to the previous letter regarding screening of visitors. One can certainly agree that it would be easier if all islands had the same standards for visitors which would include inter island visitors for inter Island visitors could absolutely be carriers of COVID. Having same standards would make sense because after all we are talking about the same virus whether it has mutated or not.
Think a little bit out of the box and let someone with current medical info, not a retired pediatrician and a lay person like Mayor Kamakazi decide what is correct. Factor in those arriving who are fully vaccinated. See if taking the NAAT test 4 to 5 days before arrival and the quick test on arrival is appropriate. Quit arguing the same thing over and over again. There are ways of getting things done even if you change the process a little. Why do you think Kauai is so different that the rules need to be different? I love Kauai, but my husband and I who are fully vaccinated and own property on Kauai are hving to stay in a bubble prison with a prison bracket on, spend $2000 to spend 4 days at a hotel from which we can see our property.
I read the letters from those who are barely getting by and know there must be a better plan for Kauai than exists now. CBagley, RN, PhD
The reason Kauai has fewer Covid-19 cases than the other Islands is that we have made rules that keep our community safe. Bill HB 1286 opens our Island up to the viruses that are off-shoots of the original Covid=19. Until all of Hawaii is safe, please let our Island keep the rules we have in place. You can replace money, you can not replace lives.
Thank you.
Aloha and thank you, Gary Hooser..
In the four months prior to October 15 when the 14-day-quarantine travel restrictions were lifted, the number of Kaua‘i cases increased from 21 cases as of June 15, to 59 cases as of October 15 — 38 new cases in four months. In the four months since October 15 the Kaua‘i numbers have increased to 179 cases — 120 new cases in four months. Kaua‘i had a two-week period last month where twenty new cases were recorded (Jan 9-22); over this last two weeks we had one new case.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but here are some Hawaiʻi state numbers I came up with — Island populations per the 2010 US Census:
Hawaiʻi Island – 185,079
Kaua‘i – 72,029
Lanai – 3,131
Maui – 154,834
Molokai – 7,345
O‘ahu – 976,372
Per the State of Hawaiʻi website https://health.hawaii.gov/coronavirusdisease2019/what-you-should-know/current-situation-in-hawaii/
Statewide – 26, 856 cases, 949 in the past 14 days, and 426 deaths total
Hawaiʻi Island has had 2,216 cases, 2 in the past 14 days, and 53 deaths total
Kaua‘i – 179 cases, 2 in the past 14 days, and 1 death total
Lanai – 108 cases, 2 in the past 14 days, and no deaths
Maui – 1,940 cases, 211 in the past 14 days, and 29 deaths total
Molokai – 26 cases, 1 in the past 14 days, and no deaths
O‘ahu – 21,597 cases, 681 in the past 14 days, and 340 deaths total
Per capita ratios by Island
Hawaiʻi Island – 1 case per 83.52 residents
Kaua‘i – 1 case per 402.4 residents
Lanai – 1 case per 29 residents
Maui – 1 case per 79.8 residents
Molokai – 1 case per 282.5 residents
O‘ahu – 1 case per 45.21 residents
Instead of our 179 cases and one death, Kaua‘i would have the following number of cases using other counties’ stats:
Using Big Island per capita ratio, Kaua‘i would have 862 cases and 21 deaths
Using Lanai, Kaua‘i would have 2,485 cases (0 deaths)
Using Maui, Kaua‘i would have 902 cases and 13 deaths
Using Molokai, Kaua‘i would have 255 cases (0 deaths)
Using O‘ahu, Kaua‘i would have 1,593 cases and 25 deaths
As of this writing, the US population is 332,227,486; with 27,638,448 COVID-19 cases and 485,300 deaths. That ratio computes to 1 case for every 12 persons in the US will be infected with COVID-19. One person for every 685 persons in the US has died. The US will surpass 500,000 COVID cases in the next ten days.
So… I will submit this information as part of my testimony – thanks for the link!
That first sentence should read “In the four months prior to October 15 when the 14-day-quarantine travel restrictions were lifted, the number of Kaua‘i cases increased from 21 cases as of June 15, to 59 cases as of October 15 — 38 new cases in four months.” I mistakenly put the increase as 28 cases.
Kaua’i has had only 7 people hospitalized out of 72,000 residents in almost 1 year of this alleged pandemic, not really any different than every years’ prior flu seasons.
Gary, when you wanted stricter rules against westside Ag poison use, you were against the state saying Kauai could not have rules separate from the state rules.
Now you’ve flipped flopped to satisfy your own agenda, you want Kaua’i to have its own separate rules.
Save lives? Is that your claim ! vs. No one has died on Kauai from Covid yet multiple people die almost every day on Kauai.
Destroying most of the businesses and their families and same for their employees and their families of Kauai ! Economic ruin for the people who supported you in the offices you were elected to. Destroying your friends is like being a Traitor. Are there other elected people from the past or present who are being traitors to those that supported and elected them.
Well listen up, being a former this and that you should know better.
The young and old working their whole life for their businesses, businesses that are supporting multiple family generations, and just like like his parents that owned Big Save Super Markets and supported the Mayor and his family until he sold sold out for a massive profit and also sold other family holdings leaving him IMMUME to the financial disaster he has single handedly condemned this single island to with an unnecessary QUARANTINE.
Mayor, we love you brother, and as mayor, good job, but either yourself and/or your medical and staff advisors are steering you to lead us down the path to ruin, from which there will be for too many Kauai people…NO RETURN. Damned to a broken business, destroyed finances, broken family, maybe suicides, divorces, lost homes, rental house, jobs, car, truck, and sanity, family youth leaving for the mainland perhaps children gone forever, parents and grandparents forlorn, needing younger generation’s help but now sadly seniors on their own after raising their children to be born, and raised and thinking they would be living their lives on Kauai.
This needless and undeserved QUARANTINE for the same annually updated flu and its naturally mutated variants, that have infected most of the world’s population year after year, since forever ago, wherein the healthy people who contracted the disease, about 98%, were all asymptomatic or only had mild symptoms.
Mayor here is a challenge for you, and same for Gary, ask your advisors medical or otherwise to tell you word for word, Chapter and Paragraph, and same to you Gary, describe the exact process of the immune system from antigenic virus exposure, to antibody production at 10,000 antibodies per second by untold millions of plasma cells, to the wiping out of virus, to immunity (describe it) to how non Contagion occurs, describe how we get to Herd Immunity. Be sure to emphasize the lock and key mechanism of antibody/antigen, and why Merck Pharmaceutical decided to pull their 2 dangerous vaccines from the market and recommend people get the natural flu and develop their own natural immunity and become non contagious. If you and your people can’t recite their immune process and it’s history dating back 550 million years our cousin vertebrates, then you guys do not know what you are stalking about.
And describe the vaccine you have so much blind faith in. What are the ingredients injected into people and how does that work to become and immune and non-contagious and part of Herd Immunity.
Explain why Pfizer Moderna injection is not allowed to be called a vaccine by the FDA, and why it must be called an Experimental Gene Therapy, and what are mystery genes injected into you going to do to you and the people in years to come after they have Genetically Modifed you. Gary you should be an expert on this since you were so Anti GMO in our food and fields.
Describe why Pfizer Moderna’s attempted “vaccine”was rejected by the FDA and not allowed to even be called a vaccine; and was instead re-routed to be called an EXPERIMENTAL untested, Gene Therapy, also untested.
Manmade untested laboratory Genes injected into your body, monitored at the Injection Station for a watch over you glimpse of a 15 minutes wait time, when some vaccine victims die within that period or enter anaphylactic shock, when normal vaccines take 2 years to test on animals.
Besides vaccines and gene therapy do not achieve human Immune System Bio-Identical matching of antibodies to the virus, thus no immunity or becoming non-contagious or being part of Herd Immunity occurs.
How so you feel about the AstraZeneca vaccine being injected into you with Chimpanzee virus…
This is scientific heresy with an uneducated pseudo scientist, the mayor, Making decisions for thousands of people in his salvation attempt to save a few elderly who must first qualify in order to die allegedly from the virus and/or its variants.
In order to die while also having a potentially inaccurate positive Covid test, you MUST ALREADY HAVE, and proven by daily statistics announcements on Oahu’s Star Bulletin News, of verifiable, PRE-existing self abusive and SELF INDUCED, chronic degenerative End-of-Life Diseases (Obesity, Diabetes, Heart, Stroke, Vascular, Hypertension, Cancers, Alzheimer’s, and Liver, Lung, & Kidney) diseases; complicated by usually at least 2 toxic and/or lethal prescription drugs for each disease, often helping to perpetuate those diseases for 2, 3, & 4 decades earlier.
And if you test positive out of curiosity and you have been positive for 2 weeks or more, then that means you have have naturally acquired the Covid virus or its natural mutated variant; and that means you have already developed your own natural immunity, and you have naturally become NON-Contagious, and have naturally become part of Herd Immunity, meaning, you cannot get the same virus or variant again, nor spread it to others, and by way of Herd Immunity will be part of eliminating the virus or variant from the population. We need you, and we need you healthy and asymptomatic for your benefit and ours.
Yes some people have been taking their often changed prescription drugs for even 40 years, seeing as to die with Covid you need by proven statistics to be between 70 and 109 years.
Elderly, Self inflicted diseases caused by diet and lifestyle abuse, decades of abuse of prescription drugs, and only with those people having those qualifications are you able to die with Covid, even if it is a false positive polymer test, whose own inventor claims the test is not intended for testing the existence of virus. Meaning if you die with a false test, it means you died from your pre-existing diseases and your abuse of prescription drug.
Let’s not forget that health and practicing it every day is the alternative to disease. Live Healthy with active Longevity or die early with disease and prescription drugs.
Why is it everyone who dies with Covid is under Medical Care? Perhaps the medical disease route is not the correct route to take.
Perform Health on yourself, or inflict yourself with Diseases.
We absolutely do not need a Quarantine…we need Healthy People.
Why are so many emergency room frontline medical doctors claiming the HydroxyChloroquin medication is getting rid of the virus diseases in a day in so many patients that it is patently clear the HydroxyChloroquin is working to save people from the Covid virus.
End the Quarantine today, Derek, if you really want to save Kauai.
You have to be kidding? I enjoyed you emails even if I didn’t agree but this article is a blatant lie about the tourist industry specific to Kauai. Visitors have been carefully and painfully explained the rules and are not confused. They are choosing to go to the other Islands or not come at all if they have to do the absurd 3 day bubble.
Please unsubscribe me from your emails.
If you can testify “in person” (via zoom) it’s more powerful than submitting testimony. For the times we protested the Superferry and the Dairy- this is even more important!! The State wants to kneecap Kauai!
Hey Gerry, too bad. We need to work. Cases are wayy down. Death rates dropping vaccines distributed. New variant doesn’t seem to be as deadly. Think of reasons to open not to stay scared and closed. To quote our great president “c’mon man!” Haha
It is easy for the author to ridicule this bill when he lists his job as volunteer. He obviously has enough money to live without tourists. Most can not. The mayor has no economic incentive to support the bill either. Both should have to “live” on welfare and their tune might change.
Thank you Gary for calling it out in this article. And thank the mayor for taking a stand when so many are willing to criticize, most of them anonymously of course.
There are four of us who plan on coming to Kauai in March for a week. All four of us have unfortunately had Covid and now have tested negative. This bubble resort idea was initially a nice compromise but now seems outdated. We will arrive in Kauai with a negative Covid test conducted within the past 72 hourspast on a Sunday night, then we purchase a tracking bracelet for$100. Then we stay at a Bubble Resort through Wednesday Night and then wake up on Thursday morning to have a Covid Test done on resort at a cost of $200 each have no intention
Bubble resorts in full swing, no new Covid cases. Yeah it’s an added cost but if people don’t want to pay or help keep island safe, many other places and islands for now.
– Having travelers try to push us to compromise on health makes no sense.