Originally Posted by
HawaiiSailor
I don't think an airline would accept a passenger who has just tested positive for COVID. Nor would a hotel, unless it was one especially dedicated for COVID positive quarantine and run by public health people. This was done in China with positive cases. I doubt we'd want to convert the Diamond Head wing at HNL into a field hospital / quarantine center. The "instant testing" as part of the arrival flow raises these issues of what you do with the positive person in front of you, and what do you do with the other people who just got off the flight behind in line for testing or lingering in baggage claim. If you just 14-day quarantine or not based on the existence of a pre-departure test result paper, you then don't have to deal with these issues on the fly at the airport. And you could add the option Vienna also has of post-arrival testing once you're at your quarantine location and early release if you test negative. This does put more onus on the hotels to be enforcers though, which they're likely not super comfortable with.
Unless COVID 19 because ubiquitous with passage of time... We are making decisions with the assumption that we are on the path of completely eradicating COVID 19 (no new infections in any state). History has shown that this won't be possible in such short period of time. I doubt any economy will survive the time required to endure no new cases of COVID.
The Vienna model will be the best method to safe guard the community, and Hawaii has to buy into a State ran program to quarantine all arrivals, and await final test results. Hawaii will do the easier of the two due to constraint in resources, and like what you said, it is much easier to not know, then know that there is a positive infected person. No matter what, the State will need to put the onus and responsibility on the traveler and the State itself, not the business industry, for the ramifications of positive testing.
Food for thought: Only around 3% of Hawaii has been tested so far (40k tests out of 1.4 million people). Shouldn't we know our own populations true positives?