Hawaii pandumbic
Let me get this straight. As reported on the front page of West Hawaii Today on Aug. 14, the only reason that the two recent tourists were arrested for entering our state with fake vaccination cards is because a person in our community tipped off the authorities? Well that sounds like a great system! How many others have entered with fake cards that were not discovered? We will probably never know because those criminals didn’t let it slip what they were up to. Obviously, our state government does not seem to have a better way of detecting fake vaccination cards other than a tipoff. With our current technology, vaccine cards must be quite easy to produce.
So let me get this straight, the almighty tourist dollar wins out over the health of our residents? Give me a break. If we have to depend on the honesty of tourists and even some of our returning residents to not fake vaccine cards to avoid quarantine, then we are in for a lot of exposure to the Delta variant and other strains. This is bad news and very avoidable with a better system in place to protect the health of the citizens of Hawaii. Why is there not a national vaccine registration system for authorities to be able to check, or a national vaccine passport?
Before vaccines were available my husband and I had to stay inside our home for two weeks last June when we were finally able to get back into the country. We were happy to be allowed to do that for the privilege of being able to return to our home, and that was when the less contagious COVID-19 was infecting the population. Now, we have a more contagious strain and less stringent rules.
That does not make sense to me.
Marian Hughes
Waimea
More information needed
According to my Aug. 13 edition of West Hawaii Today, 122 new COVID cases were reported Thursday. This is useful information, but how many of these cases were fully vaccinated? How many were visitors and how many were returning residents? How many were from clusters, and were these clusters in churches, restaurants, or schools? How many were from what age groups? We know that the authorities have this information and we know that many infections could be avoided if we had this information, so why are the authorities withholding it?
Burt Masters
Kailua-Kona
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