Safe Travels now permanent?

[Durian Fiend]

The most hilarious thing about it is that you exempt the testing if you are vaccinated... And why are we still under restrictions when tourists will surely bring more infections with them?

I'm not sure how I can square away not being freaked out by this unless you're being completely disingenuous.

I  think the test exemption is an excellent idea because it encourages vaccination.  Some vaccinated may be carriers, OK, but so are some of those who've tested negative.  If you want to discard one, I'd say discard the testing and require everyone to be vaccinated.   

In theory, the longer safe travels goes on, the sooner Covid restrictions will go away in Hawaii.  That's your main complaint, right?   No more size limits on events, no more mask requirements.  I'm also eager for this.  The problem is, this pandemic is persisting on our mainland shores due to foolish behavior.  US has now been passed by something like 50 countries for vaccine uptake.  

The Scandinavian countries have retained some restrictions for visitors coming from hotspots elsewhere in the world.  For Hawaii, similar hotspots are currently most other states in U.S.
If case rates plummet on the mainland, there would be a lot of pressure to abandon safe travels. 

Virologist Trevor Bedford recently gave an estimation of 40-100K deaths per year once Covid transitions from pandemic to endemic.  So yes, it looks like we may have to accept this respiratory death burden on top of flu.  It's interesting that flu practically disappeared during the last cold season on mainland.  So, the estimated US flu deaths of approximately 30K went missing this past year. 

I guess that "worst case scenario", would be that Hawaii decides to enact/retain mitigation measures seasonally to keep a lid on both of these viruses.  Safe Travels for ever!