With few active cases, time to get back to work

Someone please explain why we can have packages, food and mail delivered to our front doors, while delivering flowers to our front door was prohibited (“Gov. Ige reverses his decision and allows flower shops to make deliveries for Mother’s Day,” Star-Advertiser, Top News, April 28).

It seems the governor was throwing a bit of a hissy fit because someone in his office approved it without his permission.

Florists ordered flowers, people placed orders, then the governor said he had, in effect, changed his mind and wouldn’t allow it. Last I checked, we were still a free country with the ability to choose for ourselves and our families who enters our property.

The quickest way to clear up this COVID-19 issue is to stop paying all politicians until everyone is allowed to go back to making a living.

The shutdown was to “flatten the curve.” That has happened. We have very few active cases for a population of approximately 1.4 million people.

If you don’t feel safe, stay home. The rest of us need to keep living and being productive for our families, employers or employees.

John Waring

Kailua

Pragmatic leadership needed to reduce risk

People need to get back to work lest we see 15,000 mortgages go bad, 7,000 businesses close and homelessness rise by a factor of 10, all in 2020. Hawaii’s political leaders should allow businesses to reopen but with current safety restrictions. Limit shopping by square footage. Everyone must mask up outside their car or home unless respiratory-compromised.

Reduce the outside risk with a 14-day mandatory quarantine for returning Hawaii residents; 21 days for other U.S. residents; 28 days for foreign visitors. Waikiki is hurting, but our local infrastructure needs to operate.

I believe this cautious approach is much safer than what Hokkaido did, and would not cause a second wave. Put another way, the most recent new-case reports have been in the single digits. How about some pragmatic leadership, governor and mayors?

Von Kenric Kaneshiro

Downtown Honolulu

We are all connected and interdependent

A principle common to ecology, physiology, quantum physics, Buddhism and other perspectives is that everything is interconnected and interdependent. The pandemic surely is one of the clearest examples of this principle.

The world probably will be transformed in many, if not most, ways, including its ecology, economies, politics, governments, societies, religions, values and medicine. This will be long-term, not temporary or reversible.

For example, the pandemic is exposing the gross structural inequities and injustices within and among societies.

It is also challenging habitual priorities like the military-industrial complex in America. Instead, the top priority should be the health-care system and related research.

By far the greatest amount of suffering and death has long come from disease, not enemy attacks. Health must become the top priority of national security.

Hopefully knowledge, understanding, wisdom, cooperation, empathy, compassion, kindness and love will prevail in the inevitably growing chaos, disruptions, adjustments, mitigations and adaptations.

Leslie E. Sponsel

Hawaii Kai

Bad time to tear out Magic Island trees

The current Magic Island project to expand the parking lot, beside being truly unnecessary at this time when the state and county are overwhelmed by costs associated with COVID-19, involves the tearing out of beautiful older trees (“Uprooted trees at Honolulu park renewal have angered groups,” Star-Advertiser, April 30). Then new trees are to be planted?

This is a ridiculous plan and should immediately be curtailed.

Go back to the drawing board, leave the trees, and put off the project until a more opportune time to cover the cost.

Katherine Nelson

Waialua

KINDNESS GOING VIRAL

Even in these days overshadowed by the coronavirus, bright spots exist. If you see kindness or positivity going on, share it with our readers via a 150-word letter to the editor; email it to letters@staradvertiser.com. We’ll be running some of these uplifting letters occasionally to help keep spirits up, as we hunker down. We are all in this together.

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