The vaccine will not help Hawaii or Oahu unless every person getting a COVID-19 vaccine gets a card to carry.

Currently and in the coming year, the only leadership we have is to lock down, even if there are five cases or fewer a day. It is not scientifically ever possible to get to those numbers, since COVID-19 is now among the common pathogens of human populations. The vaccine theoretically is supposed to keep you from getting COVID, carrying COVID and spreading COVID.

If this is true, then you are safe and do not need a mask or to keep 6 feet apart. You can safely travel, work, go to school and carry on with your life. Without a card, you will be told to lock down for years to come, forced to wear a mask.

A crazy idea? In our own history, you needed a tuberculosis clearance card to get a job or go to school. Children need a vaccination card to attend school. Only a COVID-19 vaccine card will allow us to rebuild Hawaii once again.

Tim Brilliande

Hawaii Kai

Students should get COVID-19 vaccine

I commend Joni Kamiya for her response to schools Superintendent Christina Kishimoto’s comments regarding “personal choice” for students taking the COVID-19 vaccine.

The country is undergoing a pandemic far worse than the crippling polio virus that for decades was a concern for those who lived through it. When that vaccine became available, it was mandatory for students to get, at intervals, the three shots in school. Students were not permitted on school grounds if they abstained, a key incentive to get inoculated. The policy was 100% effective.

Unfortunately, for months the COVID-19 vaccine has been politicized in the news, but the virus has no ideology. Young or old, everyone is a target. A vaccine has been approved after intense review by the federal Food and Drug Administration, not by Congress or the White House.

There is the potential of achieving the same success we had earlier with the polio vaccine. The superintendent does a disservice to the schools and community by not mandating the immunization of our students.

Lee Champion

Waikiki

Trumpism doesn’t equate to conservatism

In his first paragraph, Dick Porter called the aggrieved party “Donald Trump supporters” (“Progressives want unity after vilifying opposition,” Star-Advertiser, Letters, Dec. 15). In his second paragraph, he mentioned “conservatives.”

They are not necessarily the same. I am a conservative, just as the late U.S. Sen. John McCain was. I have been a conservative for nearly 50 years.

The fact that I voted for the Biden-Harris ticket in the last election does not mean I am either a Democrat or a liberal. I had to do it to rid this country of the full-body canker that is Donald Trump.

The conservative agenda is not wholly the same as the caustic cult of personality that Trump wishes to sustain.

As for hurled epithets, I remember hearing more than a few “libtards” and “sheeple” being shouted from the Trumpist camp.

Ray Wong

Manoa

GOP’s only principles are power and money

Surely those of you who support the Republican Party recognize that human beings in America need help.

People need food, housing, medication, safety. Nearly half of the country voted for politicians who convinced you that these things are not good if they come in the forms of supposed “handouts” or “taking away your liberties” (masks, guns).

Over the past few decades, the Republican Party did a very good job of convincing you to vote against yourself, your family and your neighbors.

The Republican Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, was not willing to pass more COVID-19 relief unless big companies got legal protections. As Steve Schmidt, the former republican strategist, recently asserted, the Republican Party has become “an organized conspiracy for the purposes of maintaining power.”

They are not looking out for you. If you choose to open up your eyes, you will see clearly that the “Republican” politicians have abandoned such values as country and family, and care only about power and money.

Jeanne Lemon

Kailua

Rebuke Republicans who challenged election

I don’t think that Bryant Ching wants anybody killed (“Democrats should do as Trumpsters did to them,” Star-Advertiser, Letters, Dec. 7).

Remember President Donald Trump telling the Proud Boys to stand back and stand by? Kris Schwengel must have written before the attempt by Texas and 17 other state attorneys general and 106 Republican U.S. representatives to overturn the fair and legal election of Joe Biden, disenfran- chising mostly black voters of Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin and Georgia (“No good can result in call to ‘destroy’ Trumpsters,” Star-Advertiser, Letters, Dec. 11).

The more civilized way of dealing with those seditious, insurrectionist, cynical or sycophantic enablers of Trump’s plot is a very public rebuke, censure and, in some cases, disbarment of those who wasted public money and who should know the law, and who should know that the very attempt to discredit the election could incite violence.

The banana republics of the world are laughing.

Melvin Sakamoto

Palolo

Ending rail at Chinatown makes the most sense

I found Nancy Peacock and Janet Thebaud Gillmar’s argument most informative, certainly the best idea I’ve heard for how to resolve the myriad problems related to ending the rail project in a viable and constructive way (“End rail line just before Chinatown,” Star-Advertiser, Island Voices, Sept. 13).

Terminating at Middle Street or Ala Moana Center have never been ideas I could support because one undercuts the whole purpose of the project, and the other brings so much disruption and visually tarnishes the downtown landscape.

The Chinatown terminus seems perfect: Get people downtown, link up with bus routes throughout the island, and eliminate both traffic chaos and a visual eyesore while also not interrupting downtown traffic for unknown years into the future.

I hope decision-makers and citizens will take the opportunity to support this valid alternative.

Rosemary Casey

Makiki

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