On March 1, Governor David Ige extolled the state’s Safe Travels program, saying “Hawaiʻi is still the only state in the nation to have implemented such a program that we know has saved lives.” He urged residents to keep taking COVID-19 seriously, mourned the continuing mortalities as a “tragic loss to our community,” and concluded that “If there is one thing you can take away from today’s announcement it is this: The pandemic is not over.”
This rhetoric made it all the more shocking that the purpose of his press conference was to actually announce the ending of the—in his words—uniquely effective Safe Travels program, which required incoming travelers to quarantine if they weren’t vaccinated against, or hadn’t tested negative for, COVID-19.
A week later, Ige would announce the end of the state’s indoor mask mandate while simultaneously (and correctly) emphasizing that “masks are still an important tool in preventing the transmission of COVID and other respiratory viruses.”
One must wonder about this confusing logic. If the state’s pandemic mitigation policies are so successful—according to state leaders themselves—why end them at such a delicate moment before the pandemic has truly abated?
“Another COVID-19 surge is not some abstract likelihood, but something that already looks predictable in the near future,” Governing reported on March 21. “And the general political message of the moment – that the pandemic is receding into the rearview mirror – is making people complacent heading into potentially a dangerous time.”
Protective policies didn’t deter economic recovery, nor were residents asking for them to end
Since the beginning of the pandemic, state leaders have often said there is a need to “balance” public health and the economy, as if they weren’t inextricably intertwined.
Yet the state’s last remaining protective measures were evidently no deterrent to our economic recovery. In January, the state’s Council on Revenues “more than doubled its forecast for Hawaiʻi’s general fund tax revenue for this fiscal year,” as Hawaiʻi Public Radio reported.
Perhaps most significantly, domestic passenger arrivals have recovered and are already above pre-pandemic levels, according to the state Department of Business, Economic Development & Tourism. In fact, DBEDT Director Mike McCartney noted that “Visitation by the U.S. visitors has been surpassing the 2019 levels since May 2021.” (International travel has not yet recovered, but Safe Travels doesn’t impact foreign visitors, who “must still adhere to federal entry requirements,” including vaccination and testing, and their own countries’ policies, as the Star-Advertiser reported.)
It shouldn’t be surprising that COVID-19 mitigation measures would be not only a precondition for tourists to return, but in fact an incentive. State leaders recognized this as early as May 2020, when the Star-Advertiser reported that “plans are already in the works to begin marketing the state to tourists as ‘the safest place on earth.’” Far from being a barrier to visitors, the Safe Travels program allowed domestic tourism to surge to pre-pandemic levels while minimizing the virus’s ability to enter the state.
There was also no apparent community groundswell aching for the end of pandemic protections, unlike in other states. In fact, most Hawaiʻi residents seemed to be happy with them. On March 11, the Star-Advertiser conducted an informal online poll asking, “Will you continue wearing a mask routinely even after March 25, when Hawaiʻi drops its mandate?” Only 21% of respondents said “no.” A majority, 57%, said “definitely,” and the remaining 23% said they would wait and see.
These are similar figures to public opinion polling conducted by Civiqs, which has asked “How satisfied are you with your state and local government's current response to the coronavirus outbreak?” since March 2020. As of the most recent data on March 24, 56% of Hawaiʻi residents were “completely” or “mostly satisifed.” (The only subgroup that was mostly dissatisfied was Republicans.)
Ige himself observed this community coherence in his March 1 press conference, where he praised residents’ “willingness to put the community ahead of private interests,” saying this led to the “best outcomes in the nation, amongst the lowest COVID infection rates, and the lowest death rates in the country.”
It’s not just Hawaiʻi residents who prefer protective policies. Nationwide, recent polls have also found that a majority of Americans support policies “trying to control the spread of the coronavirus, even if it means having some restrictions on normal activities.” A plurality would also support “a policy that made it mandatory to wear masks in public indoor places,” even though such policies had already ended in other states.
Protective policies rapidly ending statewide
A handful of protective policies still remain, like the state’s indoor mask mandate for public schools and the federal government’s mask mandate for public modes of transportation, including TheBus and airplanes. (The latter is set to end on April 18, though on March 23, several airline CEOs, including the head of Hawaiian Airlines, asked the federal government to end it “now.”)
But many other protective policies have already ended with similarly abstruse logic, like the City and County of Honolulu’s Safe Access Oʻahu program. Until March 5, Safe Access required those entering high-risk indoor businesses like restaurants and gyms to show proof of vaccination or a negative test for COVID-19.
As Safe Access ended, Mayor Rick Blangiardi acknowledged that “we know [it] helps spur vaccination levels” and without the program, there would likely be “less incentive” for people to get vaccinated and boosted. Indeed, Safe Access was “largely supported” by the restaurant industry, Hawaiʻi News Now reported.
The city’s popular sidewalk dining program also inexplicably ended on March 5, which restaurateurs had praised and hoped would become permanent. “Most of the guests are choosing [outdoor dining] because it’s a safe option today,” one proprietor told Hawaiʻi News Now after the city abruptly disallowed sidewalk dining. (Indoor dining is inherently more conducive to COVID-19 transmission because of the virus’s airborne nature, and with few exceptions, there has been little effort to systematically reduce risk and improve indoor air quality.)
Counties are scaling back or suspending their free COVID-19 testing operations. And as of March 25, residents statewide can no longer create digital vaccination records, nor access their previous records if they weren’t properly saved, due to the state’s curious decision to host those records on the Safe Travels platform, which was taken offline.
Aesthetic of “normal” shouldn’t supplant necessary precautions
Hawaiʻi, of course, is not alone in ending its protective policies; most states and the federal government are curtailing mitigation measures and funding.
But although the “worst of the Covid-19 pandemic may be behind us … pretending that it is over will not make it so,” the New York Times Editoral Board wrote on March 26. “In the face of this uncertainty, it would be reckless for the government to reduce its efforts to minimize new cases and help those who fall ill.”
Local experts are echoing this concern. Infectious disease expert Tim Brown told the Star-Advertiser he would “strongly recommend that people keep masking indoors” and said the Department of Health should go back to daily COVID-19 updates, instead of weekly. “People are tired of COVID, but that doesn’t make COVID any less dangerous going forward,” he said.
Daniel Ross, president of the Hawaiʻi Nurses Association, told Hawaiʻi News Now that with Safe Travels ending, it could “bring new variants to Hawaiʻi.” Libby Char, the Department of Health director, also acknowledged that “what we're worried about is the next surge related to another variant.” When asked if she expects an increase in COVID-19 cases with the ending of the indoor mask mandate, she responded, “I sure hope that it doesn’t increase.”
Across the country, “many people said they feared dropping their guard now only to invite a pernicious new variant to dash their hopes yet again,” the New York Times reported on March 10. “Some said that loosening restrictions would actually make them feel less secure about going to supermarkets or bookstores, driving them back into their homes. … Parents of children younger than 5, who are not eligible to be vaccinated, said they had been left exposed as the restrictions lapsed.”
Instead of “using this lull to prepare for the future,” as Governing recommended, leaders are encouraging an aesthetic of pre-pandemic “normal,” characterizing caution as “fear” and fixating on “personal responsibility” without giving residents the tools they need. Nobody wants to repeat the past two years of the pandemic, which is why the rush to drop protective measures at such an uncertain juncture remains mystifying.
