Green says masks will be last to go

[kalianna]

Iʻm even more concerned about crowd restrictions. I donʻt think thereʻs anywhere else that wonʻt let you have a crowd of more than a hundred people outside.

[TomK]

lots of tourist in town today, ridiculously masked up walking in open air.. I wonder what they were told before disembarking.

Again people, masks are useless.+++ Ask ur grandma if she even cares. I bet she wanted her grandchildren breathing freely and developing social skills vis-a-vis pure interaction.

If you prefer being muzzled, good for you.
Carry on your wide berth in fear and compliance.

I'm curious about where the tourists are being disembarked and what "+++" means even if you want to ask your grandma, and yes, she probably doesn't care one way or the other even if it includes a wide berth or compliance.

[HereOnThePrimalEdge]

+++ Ask ur grandma 

Her co-pay may be less than your doctor’s, but often you get what you pay for.

[kalakoa]

Remember, Green has no authority -- it's less than pointless to argue about his OPINION.

Governor Ige has already issued a non-statement about "working to determine when the time is right" and "protecting our community from this potentially deadly virus" (Star-Advertiser 2-19-2022).

If you don't like the mandates, MOVE TO ANOTHER STATE.

[MyManao]

I think itʻs time to let people make their own decisions..

That’s why I decided to get a better fitting and filtering mask. I'm now using..

https://www.3m.com/3M/en_US/p/d/v000152049/

And, surprisingly, even though they're bulky they are light, reusable, comfortable, and provide 99.97% protection..

I was happy to believe in a cloth mask, the best multi layers and all that, as long as everyone else was at least trying to comply with the distancing and masking and in general being respectful to other’s concerns. But since last summer that’s been slipping, and since the holidays I think it has begun to break down entirely. So yeah, if you don’t want to breathe another’s breath.. it’s on you.

I think our restrictive measures were breaking down before Omicron, and the two, it’s arrival and society’s lessoning of its restraints, converged to blow us out of the water. But even without Omicron society was losing its patience and has been organically moving towards 'living with’ rather than 'fighting against' for awhile. So, yep, if you don’t want it, it’s on you to keep from getting it. Which, from my perspective, doesn’t bode well for us if there’s a variant that escapes the boundaries of whatever immunity we might have..

For instance, this is the first published study of the latest variant.. which begins..

Soon after the emergence and global spread of a new severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) Omicron lineage, BA.1 (ref1,2), another Omicron lineage, BA.2, has initiated outcompeting BA.1. Statistical analysis shows that the effective reproduction number of BA.2 is 1.4-fold higher than that of BA.1. Neutralisation experiments show that the vaccine-induced humoral immunity fails to function against BA.2 like BA.1, and notably, the antigenicity of BA.2 is different from BA.1. Cell culture experiments show that BA.2 is more replicative in human nasal epithelial cells and more fusogenic than BA.1. Furthermore, infection experiments using hamsters show that BA.2 is more pathogenic than BA.1. Our multiscale investigations suggest that the risk of BA.2 for global health is potentially higher than that of BA.1.

The entire study (.pdf) is here.. https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/...1.full.pdf

And if that’s too much gobbledygook.. it means we could have a spring surge as big and bad and maybe even worse than the last one..

[randomq]

Not drinking and driving doesn't prevent all auto accidents.
Not speeding doesn't prevent all auto accidents.
Not texting and driving doesn't prevent all auto accidents.

Yet they are still all good ideas for you and others... Hmm.

[kalianna]

Agreed, unfortunately. A new variant taking hold definitely changes the equation, and with it my willingness to continue with masks, etc. Letʻs enjoy these few weeks of declining cases before hunkering down for what comes next.

[HereOnThePrimalEdge]

Letʻs enjoy these few weeks of declining cases

Best COVID related advice I’ve seen on Punaweb in a long, long time.

[Durian Fiend]

Remember, Green has no authority -- it's less than pointless to argue about his OPINION.

Governor Ige has already issued a non-statement about "working to determine when the time is right" and "protecting our community from this potentially deadly virus" (Star-Advertiser 2-19-2022).

It's obviously not just a random opinion he's sharing, rather one that's based on communications he's had with Ige and possibly others.

Update:  Safe Travels likely to go mid March and indoor mask mandate mid April.   https://beatofhawaii.com/hawaii-poised-to-eliminate-travel-rules-mask-mandate/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=hawaii-poised-to-eliminate-travel-rules-mask-mandate

[AaronM]

The CDC has made their thoughts on the spread of Covid outdoors very well known. Feel free to do your own research.

At this point we should be able to go maskless at Makuu and dare I say it - eat at the picnic tables FFS!