By James Hochberg, AAL, LLLC | April 29, 2020
Governor Ige issued a Proclamation on April 24th extending the statewide lockdown for another complete month up to May 31. He continues to classify church as a non-essential activity and continues the shutdown requirements for retail and other businesses notwithstanding how low the incidents of COVID19 is in Hawaii. The Proclamation also provides a penalty for violating of $5,000 and/or up to one year imprisonment.
The easing of the prior restrictions includes opening parks and beaches but only for exercising (movement) but no stationary presence or gathering together. He chopped off 31 full days of May at one time in spite of the HUGE amount of research data on the COVID19 virus that has come out during April. We expect to get lots and lots of new data each day during May, so why order anything for another whole month?
In Hawaii, our infection and death numbers are so low that the CDC drops Hawaii off the chart of infection/deaths of the various states. The warm weather and humidity also contributes a positive effect on the spread of the virus. Add to those facts the physical location of our state in the middle of the Pacific Ocean in pretty much complete isolation.
Yesterday, I received a mailer card from my Senator, Stanley Chang, that simply regurgitated the Governor’s ruling. What a waste of time to create the mailer, and a waste of money sending it out. We need elected officials to represent us, now with this COVID19 shutdown and otherwise. I would have preferred Senator Chang to push the Governor to respond to this information:
- Testing in other states across our country replicates testing in other countries that the COVID19 is not as dangerous as originally feared.
- Although more infectious, COVID19 is not more dangerous than the seasonal flu for most people who are not older than 65 without other underlying chronic serious health problems.
- The economy was effectively shut down on a fear that has not panned out in terms of overwhelming hospitals and resulting in huge numbers of deaths.
- Putting aside the conspiracy theories, the economy probably did not need to be shut down in the way it was, but now, based on the data since March, the shutdown of the economy certainly cannot be continued waiting for a vaccine.
- We have failed to create vaccines for numerous other diseases notwithstanding spending lots of time and money attempting to find a vaccine.
- Therefore, the people/residents/voters in Hawaii have closed down their sources of family income and are out of money to support their families.
- Hawaii must move to open the economy as quickly as is safe based on the new data available and that becomes available.
Other states have relaxed their shutdown restrictions in the same period that Governor Ige extended ours for another entire month. This cannot be allowed to continue but where are our elected representatives to actually represent us?
I would like to write a letter to Senator Chang along the lines above and get as many of us that live in his district to sign on. If you don’t know what senatorial district you live in, type your home address here to find out: https://www.capitol.hawaii.gov/ and find this in the upper right side of the page:
