UH mask policy risks long COVID infection

“The rate of COVID-19 community transmission is no longer disrupting daily life,” the University of Hawaii said in a news release. “Most infections now are not life-threatening, and many recover without hospitalization.”

This statement was made by UH in regards to its decision to remove the indoor masking requirement. However, the decision is incredibly ignorant toward the numerous other significant dangers associated with infection, specifically long COVID, which now affects up to 7.5% of all adults in the U.S., according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in June.

Removing the indoor masking requirement will so impact students, professors and staff who may have any number of factors that place them at higher risk for more severe illness. The university is actively exposing these people to significantly higher risk settings without alternatives. This is a negligent and wrong decision by UH.

Noa Araki

Diamond Head

Find common good in housing policy

Robert Speers, an officer of a condominium association in Honolulu, expresses outrage in his commentary (“On vacation rentals, let condominium associations decide,” Star-Advertiser, Island Voices, Sept. 8).

Not outrage at the crisis of housing affordability in Hawaii, or the number of people living on our streets, but at city Ordinance 22-7, because it places new restrictions on “the right of all homeowners islandwide, to rent their property to visitors.”

Actually, Ordinance 22-7 finally addresses a severe public policy failure causing considerable suffering and inequity in our community — especially to those who are victims of our severe housing crisis. It aims to restrict thousands of homeowners (many of whom live part or most of the year elsewhere) who use their houses and condo units as investments. The ordinance will help put thousands of units on the market for local residents to live in.

Speers clearly believes that the interests of individual owners must take precedence over the common good for the people of Hawaii. But isn’t this kind of thinking a major factor in disuniting our country right now? If we cannot prioritize the common good, we have no future.

Noel Kent

Manoa

All options required for firm generation

Firm generation — a resource that’s available 24/7 to generate electricity — is the foundation of a reliable grid. A machine may, on rare occasion, be unavailable, either for scheduled maintenance or because of an unexpected event.

In their commentary, David Hunt and John Kawamoto concluded that this fact makes a conventional generator no more reliable than a solar panel or a windmill (“The fallacy of ‘firm’ energy’s reliability,” Star-Advertiser, Island Voices, Sept. 14). Firm generators, whether they run on oil, biofuels, biomass, trash or geothermal, are the workhorses of the grid.

To achieve our clean-energy goals, we need to take an “all-of-the-above” approach that keeps the lights on when the sun isn’t shining, the wind isn’t blowing and the battery is drained. That means a broad portfolio of resources, including firm generation, which we expect will be run on more locally sourced renewable fuels and potentially on clean fuels like hydrogen someday.

Jim Kelly

Vice president, Hawaiian Electric Co.

More water needed for more housing

I am writing this letter to let the people running for political office (Josh Green, Duke Aiona, Brian Schatz and everyone else who say they have a plan for affordable housing) know, they all are missing the boat.

Why have more affordable housing when we do not have enough water to sustain housing we already have? We need to have the federal government provide funds to set up portable distillation units on our shores and provide water to our water tables that the Navy is dumping daily.

If the federal government can give Ukraine billions of dollars, why can’t it afford a few million for Oahu for distillation or reverse osmosis plants?

The Navy ruined our Red Hill water table. It should replenish it.

W. Dutch Kay

Kailua

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