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A second coronavirus test is needed for visitors. Someone could test negative and then positive four to five days later. (The White House press secretary tested positive on Day 5).
A person could also party for two days at a COVID-infested bar and then board the plane and spread away on our islands.
Please let Kauai hold a second test three days after arrival and implement it across the islands. Infections are ramping up throughout the U.S. A second test is our only defense here to try and keep this in check.
Our Kauai mayor has done a very good job trying to keep us safe. Life is just slowly starting to get back to a whisper of what it was. Stores are open, restaurants are social distancing and the COVID-19 count is low here. If this gets out of control again, the economy will be crushed.
Tourist dollars will not replace a lost loved one. Let us test a second time.
Wayne Zebzda
Koloa, Kauai
Public school students need on-campus learning
My Maui home was scheduled to host two high school foreign exchange students, but lack of leadership and foggy vision by our state’s leaders caused this experience to be canceled. Exchange students are required to attend a school that has an on-campus or blended educational program.
With vision, our private schools are providing on-campus learning with COVID-19 safety protocols. There seems to be no organized plan as to when the state Department of Education will have the public school students back on campus.
Some school principals have said, “We are just winging it.”
With poor executive government leadership, our public school students are at a disadvantage with virtual or blended learning and could struggle for future success.
What has happened to our ohana should serve as a reminder that it’s important who you elect to public office, and the misfortunes that can happen with indecisive, weak leadership.
Be mindful of who you vote for. Failed leaders do impact our community and our keiki have clearly experienced this failed leadership.
Phil Winter
Kihei, Maui
Unused cruise ships could house homeless
This might be an oddball idea, but please consider the possibility of using defunct cruise ships, some of which are being scrapped in Turkey, for housing the homeless. In light of the COVID crisis, they shouldn’t be filled to capacity right now, but they could certainly house a couple of hundred people safely and later, include many more residents when it is safe to do so. It would also solve the NIMBY problem.
Ginny Edmunds
Niu Valley
Choosing Trump means choosing ‘Proud Boys’
You saw their pictures a few weeks ago. Big men with bulging muscles, huge rifles and bandoliers bristling with ammunition (and no masks). They had stormed the Michigan legislature, responding to President Donald Trump’s call to do something to “liberate Michigan.” You saw their pictures again on the evening news. They conspired to abduct Gretchen Whitmer, the elected governor of Michigan.
Recently Trump, speaking about the upcoming election, issued a call for his supporters to “stand by” — presumably to do something if there was an election result he did not like.
If this is who you want to run the country for the next four years, this is what you will get. But don’t come around crying a year from now when you realize you don’t like living under a fascist dictatorship run by the Trump Party with these “Proud Boys” as the enforcers.
Thomas A.Wills
Kaimuki
White supremacists pose risk of ‘active shooters’
The commentary, “Be alert for potential ‘active shooters’,” (Star-Advertiser, Island Voices, Oct. 11) was interesting and informative about steps to grapple with this tragic behavior.
What was omitted were the encouraging calls by many of our politicians to armed and unarmed violence. The open support of white supremacists like boogaloo boys, Proud Boys and others by President Donald Trump and the Republican Party only supports more of the same bloodshed and cruelty. There was no mention in the article on how to deal with that growing problem.
There was no mention of the media’s role in fanning the flames of bloodshed by not holding those who engage in hate speech accountable. In some cases the media itself (Fox News and others) participated in the spread of violent rhetoric. The commentary was very good but needed to be expanded to cover a leading influence on present-day “active shooters.”
Anton Chainwalker
Haleiwa
Democrats using crisis to undermine president
With the onset of the pandemic, Democrats have taken Rahm Emanuel’s Obama-era adage, “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste,” to heart.
Joe Biden is making good use of it by attributing the pandemic’s toll to a failure of President Donald Trump’s actions, even as touted medical experts modify recommended responses on about a daily basis as they deal with a once-in-a-century contagion.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi obstructs much-needed monetary aid to those suffering job losses in order to effect a progressive wish list that includes financial bailouts for cities suffering from years of profligate spending. Pelosi takes advantage of Trump’s virus infection to suggest that the virus impaired his mental capacity and moves to evaluate using the Constitution’s 25th Amendment to remove the president from office.
Is it too much to expect that the Democratic Party’s corrupt use of this crisis will give rise to any shame?
Tom Freitas
Hawaii Kai
Trump doesn’t tell supporters how to think
Watching the presidential debates and thinking about the last 12 years, I’m trying to think about why I’m fine with President Donald Trump and had problems with President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden.
When Trump talks, he tells you what he thinks. I may not agree with all he says, but he says what he intends to do. When I hear Obama and Biden speak, I feel like I’m being lectured to — like I don’t know what I think and should be thinking differently.
I’m cool with a candidate who tells me what he’s going to do. If I agree with most of what he wants to do, then I’ll go with that. But I need to know what he intends to do. Don’t we all? Do we want a pig in a poke? I hope not.
Stef Wenska
Kailua
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