The COVID variants are deadlier. Miraculously, we warp-sped the emergency use of vaccines to help combat COVID-19. The vaccines are not 100% effective and we are still learning how the vaccines actually work in the whole population.

Now we learned from breakthrough cases of our no-mask-rewarded vaccinated that they can become infected with the delta variant and may be asymptomatic carriers. Until we get to a safer place, we all need to mask up again and the diehards need to get vaccinated.

What is confusing or hard to understand about this? The U.S.-based Spanish flu lasted almost four years before it disappeared on its own. We must do all we can to warp-speed the eradication of COVID.

Listen to reliable sources, not some social media posters and political leaders who have lost their reasoning abilities and common sense. Donald Trump got vaccinated, but he’s ashamed to tell you he’s in the national count of the fully vaccinated.

Joyce Matsuo

Kalihi Valley

Workload overwhelms health care workers

COVID-19 ended my 40-year career in emergency medicine, but I remain in contact with family and friends who continue to deal with the realities COVID brings every day.

Hospital administrators talk about ample bed capacity without making note of the overcrowded emergency rooms, often closed to ambulances and holding admitted patients with COVID-19 and other conditions. Patients often cannot get specialty care.

Nurses and staff are overwhelmed. Nurses often are asked to work 12- to 16-hour shifts.

There appears to be no deep understanding of the toll that this pandemic brings down on the very people trying to serve patients and save lives.

Now we have an unprecedented wave of new infections, which inevitably will result in nurses and staff again being asked to step up and deal with whatever COVID has to throw at Hawaii.

This is not the time to ask them also to care for hordes of tourists, or to fill elective-surgery schedules, or relax restrictions. It is time to protect our medical community and residents with meaningful actions.

Daniel Smith

Hawaii Kai

Government should push vaccine mandates

It’s clear that we have moved beyond the point of trusting people to use their conscience and reason to get vaccinated. Incentives also have not worked.

The government needs to act decisively and mandate vaccinations for the following: All city and state employees, as well as all adults who work with children under 12 and with other vulnerable populations. It also should restrict access to restaurants, stores, indoor venues and public transportation only to those who have been fully vaccinated.

Personal freedom and rights do not mean you can endanger the lives and health of others by your refusal to get vaccinated.

Matt Nakamura

Hawaii Kai

Texas Democrats fled state, shirked duties

Imagine our health-care providers during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic refusing to attend to patients in dire need of medical attention because they feared death or serious illness; our Ocean Safety lifeguards observing a distressed swimmer in need of assistance but refusing to act because of fear of death or personal injury; our firefighters refusing to respond to a major fire because of exposure to toxic chemicals or other fears; our ambulance crews refusing a medical emergency request for fear of exposure to viruses.

The aforementioned calls to duty can only be accomplished by individuals committed to their oftentimes thankless acts of heroism.

But by elevating themselves as “heroes,” when they ran with tails between their legs from the safety of their legislative chambers, faced with only mere threat of a fierce debate, the Texas Democrats exposed themselves as true cowards (“Texas Democrats dig in after exodus; GOP threatens arrest,” Star-Advertiser, Top News, July 13). Fire them! They know not the true meaning of acts of heroism.

Clayton L. Pasion

Waipahu

Next to GOP, criticism of Democrats laughable

As I read John Tamashiro’s letter, I wondered whether he’d been asleep for five years or was warming up his stand-up comedy routine (“Democrats’ proposals a recipe for disaster,” Star-Advertiser, Aug. 2). To criticize Democrats after a Republican administration allowed 500,000 people to die, then attempted a coup d’etat of an elected president, is amazingly brazen. Nothing Democrats could do would match the disaster named Trump.

But I also must take issue with his contentions. To say there is a crime-wave pandemic is ridiculous, and to blame what increase in crime exists on defunding the police and opening the border is equally laughable. Mandates and faulty messaging? Ha, ha, ha: Many Republican-run states are denying their localities and municipalities the right to mandate anything that might save lives, but they are still pushing The Big Lie.

I would gladly debate any or all of these issues, but Republicans would rather wage a culture war.

Jim Keefe

Waikiki

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