Only true if there is a miraculous vaccine or other cure in short order, or they completely isolate from the rest of the world forever (which is obviously never going to happen). Otherwise, they've just postponed both the short term pain AND the long term pain.

The "short term pain for long term group gain" approach would be to do very limited quarantine of at-risk individuals, let the rest of the population get sick and recover, and then move on without fear of the germ.

I am still holding out a slim hope for our July 3rd vacation to Maui. Flights are fully refundable and I have a hotel that can be cancelled up to 14 days of arrival. Sigh.

It's not as though Australia, New Zealand, Italy etc didn't have all you mentioned.

I think the key differentiator is we value individualism a lot and the arguments driving the lack of a tight lock down were about civil liberties not group good. Nothing wrong with that, just that we will suffer longer than other countries who did the tight lock down.

There's probably no other country that values group good more than Japan, yet as you can see by my post above, their existing laws are very protective of civil liberties, even more than the U.S., in relation to the pandemic, which surprised me. Despite that, deaths in Japan from the virus are close to those of Australia and New Zealand, so I wonder if the argument of individualism vs. group good is valid.

Your conflating laws with values.

Could you imagine the protests that would have happened if the USA has had a lockdown like Spain (no going out even for exercise) for seven weeks?

Just look upstream in this topic for an example of some behavior. A few people have mentioned guns if they were asked to quarantine in a hotel rather than their own homes. Yet in Australia and New Zealand that's exactly what people were expected to do and did. No protests, guns etc because there value system is more towards common good.

I would say 99% sure it won�t happen. The problem is that the quarantine could look to be ending June 30, then a few days before that they extend another 30 days etc .
As a quarterly traveler over to Hawaii for work I am being very realistic that 2020 could be a complete bust for trips over. Once I know it�s been for sure lifted then I will plan a trip over and I guarantee there will be rules in place for arrivals such as testing right before leaving , testing on landing etc. It�s not going to be fun especially for a family vacation that so many do in Hawaii.
My other personal fear is if by some chance I do get sick while staying on the outer islands (Maui/Big Island/Kauai) it could be a real issue for healthcare and lack of it. They have very limited resources and it could be scary if things got overwhelmed. I will be staying in Honolulu for the near future and doing day trips to the outer islands for meetings.

Hi,

The governor of HI said the quarantine would stay in effect until at least the end of June. So there is a slim chance! Best of luck!

Going be booking a flight back to KOA for 7/15, I am guardedly optimistic it will go off with out the quarantine issue. If the quarantive goes any longer that 7/1 and I don't see how the hotel industry (also food and beverage) can handle it. 90% of the people I know in Hawaii are in the tourism business and right now they are barely holding on. A few are moving off the Island "when possible" as they basically have no jobs. This isn't just idle talk but fact.

If Hawaii loses the entire summer tourist season there is going to be serious civil unrest. I hope that the government realizes this and is making a plan to allow tourists to re-enter as safely as possible.

I don't see how they can remove quarantine in July. The virus is holding steady in parts of the mainland, if they open in July they will undo everything they have done in the last few weeks. They don't have the systems in place to do the amount of testing required.

It could easily be done just like Iceland, Austria. Test on arrival and use a mandatory phone tracing app. But the government is too lazy, too stupid or too risk averse to figure this out. In the meantime thousands of Hawaiians are unemployed which is going to cause even more health problems and deaths down the road.

As for the mainland, there are many parts of California (and other states) where there have been few or none positive cases in weeks. It would make a lot of sense to distinguish between NYC metro and rural Wyoming in terms of quarantine on arrival. Again, Hawaii government is too lazy (to be fair so are others).

Disagree. If USA didn't value common good then we would have stayed open like Sweden and/or people would not have respected the quarantine (over 90% for most of the blue cities, according to mobile phone data). The difference is that we value our freedoms and do not give them up lightly. This is reinforced by the courts which are generally loathe to impose broad restrictions on freedom when a more narrow one will do. I can't speak to AZ and NZ (having not resided there) but maybe they are just more content to emulate sheep.

From what I hear there maybe more unrest if they open up. Locals just don�t want mainland folks over for the time being. After my zoom call yesterday with a diverse group of my customers they basically said it�s best to plan for at a much later time (late 2020 or 2021) and I get the feeling from locals on social media this is the case as well (my are in the hospitality industry)
now they have worked out the issues with state unemployment and checks are flowing they are ok with keeping things closed for the summer

Trust me I wish I could go in fact I was suppose to be there in March and this week as well with the long holiday weekend booked into a suite at the Andaz Maui 😥 finally decided for the first time in years to stay over and relax. I just hope next summer 2021 it can happen

Thank you, that's interesting. Where are all these funds going to come from to support people not working for 6-12 months? Did they talk about that?

We are scheduled to go to Maui at the end of July. We have to cancel by July 10 or so to get our money back. If the quarantine isn't lifted by 7/1, we will definitely cancel. Also, I will cancel if we have to take a test when we arrive. I am not going to risk that many $ to get there and then have somebody in my family test positive. (We wouldn't fly if anybody had symptoms.) I don't know what they would do with you in that instance.

And you are right, the tourism industry can't be far from civil unrest.

From what Hawaii data or experience do you draw to posit that Hawaii would have "serious civil unrest" due to economic struggles?

I've been here for a very, very long time, and the only thing close to "civil unrest" I've seen are protest marches and sit-ins against the Vietnam War and against telescopes on Mauna Kea. These kinds of protests are routine behavior on the mainland for a multitude of political and social goals, and are never classified as "civil unrest." Never have I seen the "mainland-routine" rioting that happens when a sports team wins or someone doesn't like how they are treated by the police.

The idea that we are going to have civil unrest, ie., rioting, is ludicrous. And, I don't care what General Hara said about this topic.