Originally Posted by
ajf87
Hawaii will be in much better shape sooner than the mainland, but since many other states are blowing this whole thing off I don't see the 14-day quarantine being lifted on May 31st for mainland visitors (it will probably be different for inter-island travel for Hawaii residents, hopefully). It's already difficult to enforce a relatively simple rule, I can't imagine how much more difficult it would be to have different rules for visitors from different states.
And for everyone getting pissy, you can thank certain states and their "leaders" for wanting to re-open despite no widespread testing, contact tracing, vaccine, or flattening of the curve. Hawaii is rightfully not willing to sacrifice their at-risk citizens in the name of the economy. That and the Trump rallies "protests" to re-open Applebee's and GreatClips.
That's a pretty broad brush. California has been on major lockdown for almost 2 months and has 1/8 of the US population. Throw in Washington and Oregon and you probably have 50 million potential visitors. As I suggested above, Hawaii could easily open up to residents of these states and require airlines to test before boarding. Or just require visitors to bring proof of recent tests (my county is now offering free tests to all residents. Airlines that fail to comply will be forced to repatriate passengers to the mainland on the next flight. I have personally seen this done in other countries for arrivals that lack proper paperwork, and airlines can easily enforce this requirement at the boarding gate.
But why bother to come up with a reasonable plan to rescue your economy when you can just sit comfortably in your government office and let your health officers take the heat and your constituents can get bailout money to buy some rice and spam.