Governor, go without pay
Governor Ige recently stated that the stay-at-home order may need to be extended.
Here on Kaua‘i, we are still subjected to roadblocks, curfews and other somewhat-draconian measures.
Yet, while people go without jobs, businesses suffer and risk closing permanently and many go hungry, those making these decisions seem to go unscathed.
The governor still gets his salary, Mayor Kawakami still gets his pay, the state workers and county employees still get a regular paycheck.
So, I suggest that these public servants show their solidarity with the people they represent.
Governor, return your pay for the entire period of the lockdown, the same with our mayor and the councilmembers. Let our state representatives and senators suffer the same loss of income as the bartenders, waitresses and waiters, room-cleaners and all the others who have suffered so badly under these “lockdown” orders and business closings.
It seems only fair that if we can’t make a living we should not pay for those making the decisions that led to these losses. While they make nonsense statements of “understanding our pain,” they suffer none if it. Time for our “leaders” to step up and get a dose of their own medicine. Fair is fair.
Barry Dittler, Kapa‘a
There is no long-term threats to our rights
A twist on an old myth: After saving a kingdom, all the hero requests is three grains of rice, multiplied by three each day, for a month. Of course, he takes the country’s entire crop. That’s how geometric progressions work.
Now, take an infectious COVID-19 person (please). The R-factor — the number of people he will infect in an unsequestered society — is about three, based on the O‘ahu McDonald’s and the Maui incidents. This is uncommonly high for viral infections, because COVID-19 carriers are unknowingly infectious before showing symptoms and many infected never show symptoms sufficient to cause quarantine. So the virus spreads from that one person to a total contagion this way:
1, 4, 13, 40, 121, 364, 1093, 2,074, 3,280 … .
If perhaps our hospitals aren’t overwhelmed now, that one person (say, one of those self-proclaimed freedom fighters patting himself and others on the back with an carrier hand) can within a week or so send hundreds to the hospitals, scores to the ICU and put several dozen kupuna and keiki on ventilators, which does overwhelm our limited medical capabilities. At a 2% mortality rate (likely higher here with an elder-slanted population), this “patriot” causes about 65 premature (and horrible) deaths, just to this point in the process, which goes on.
I’m old and my memory fails, but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t hospital whitecoats the founding father were fighting; the slogan wasn’t “No sequestration without active infestation,” but had to do with voting and taxes.
Living on Kaua‘i, we are among the luckiest people on earth. We are in one of the most sheltered and thereby safe places on the planet. Let’s keep that freedom from illness. Practice social distancing, even if it seems unnecessary.
Despite an ingrained bias against government excess (I’ve supported the ACLU for over 50 years), I don’t see a long-term threat to our constitutional freedoms from the emergency orders, even if overinclusive rather than underinclusive.
It will be a different matter if the emergency orders are prolonged after the health crisis ceases, or if cronies or families of politicians profit from suspending contracting restrictions or otherwise capitalize on our misery. We’ll have plenty of time to deal properly with such miscreants.
Jed Somit, Kapa‘a
Source: The Garden Island