Worried about opening up the state to tourism again with a largely untested system of screening, and without a clear game plan for how to evaluate success (or failure), and when facts on the ground would prompt a retreat to safety? Yes, I’m definitely worried about how to move forward, balancing economic needs with health and safety.
I’m reprinting this Facebook post by Lee Evslin, a retired primary care physician and healthcare administrator, who expresses similar concerns. I don’t know Lee, but I know his concern is shared by many, and his FB post has been shared by several mutual friends.
Perhaps more substantive evaluation of the Alaska experience is necessary? If the state has done a relatively thorough assessment, how about sharing it with the public?
Evslin wrote:
Our state is planning to move to a single PCR test before arrival and no quarantine unless one does not take the test starting August 1. The plan is to be similar to Alaska’s. I have a friend who is one of the district health officers in Alaska. I called him tonight. Their new system went into effect June 5th.
He said that they have had a big upsurge in cases since then and the system has also not worked well for logistical issues such as results not coming back in a timely fashion. He advises us to be very careful about adopting such a system.
I checked Alaska’s data. They went from having 40 active cases in May to having 400 active cases at the end of June with a rapidly rising curve. Tonight Alaska was reported to be one of the states with their greatest single day high in cases.
Alaska has about one half of our population and is 60 times bigger than Hawaii, meaning it appears much less crowded than Hawaii.
The Mainland is also rapidly losing control and they will be the majority of our visitors. I am very worried about opening with a single test system and no quarantine.
Lee Evslin, MD
Discover more from i L i n d
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Alaska and Hawaii both have a big jump in cases starting early June.
(Google “Alaska COVID Cases” and compare to “Hawaii COVID cases” and compare to “Puerto Rico COVID cases”)
Alaska’s starts May 27 but they did not reopen tourism until June 5. Hawaii’s began June 5 but we are not reopening tourism until August 1. This places the cause-effect pattern in question.
(Puerto Rico has a big jump in COVID cases starting May 27 but they are not implementing the Alaska-Hawaii plan until July 15. Again where is the cause-effect relationship?)
Evslin is co-author of “Kauai’s Golden Window of Opportunity” — a plan to use COVID to quash tourism. He has an agenda just as surely as the tourism industry has an agenda.
Many wealthy retirees agree with his agenda but that does not make his cause-effect case accurate.
There have been numerous local criticisms of Hawai`i’s response to the pandemic, but in fact our tight restrictions on visitors, along with other efforts, has worked remarkably well. Reuters publishes a daily report on state-by-state total cases, deaths, and cases/deaths per 100,000 population. As of today we are one of only four states with a coronavirus death rate of less than 5 persons per 100,000 residents. The other three states and their deaths per 100,000 are Wyoming (3), Alaska (2), and Montana (2). Ours is the lowest at 1.
Note, however, that those other three states are characterized by having no true metropolitan areas and exceptionally low population densities overall, with Montana at 7 people per square mile, Wyoming at 6, and Alaska at 1. Our statewide population density is 220 people per square mile, just below Illinois. Moreover, two-thirds of Hawai`i’s residents live on O`ahu, making it one of the most densely populated metropolitan areas in the country. (Note: there are different definitions of metropolitan area. One of the more recent and sophisticated, by Richard Florida of Bloomberg City Lab, based on a 2015 US Census Bureau Report, ranks the Honolulu metro area density at #4 in the US, following New York/New Jersey/Long Island; San Francisco/Oakland/Fremont; and Los Angeles/Long Beach/Santa Ana.)
Now, add in one more factor: Waikiki. According to the State of Hawai`i Data Book for 2017 (the most recent I have handy) the daily de facto population density of Waikiki in 2010 was 125,159,600 persons per square mile. Or, about double the population density of Mumbai. And, as we all know, tourists visit us to have fun, to gather, and–dare I say–too often to behave more recklessly than they would back home.
With US coronavirus cases right now surging to the highest daily rate ever–and California, our closest large neighbor and supplier of tourists, among the leaders in that infectious surge–I would say Ian’s worries are more than justified.
Of course, we are for now and the foreseeable future stuck with tourism as our number one industry. But even for those who appear to be valuing the economy over human lives, a precipitous opening of the tourism floodgates likely would cause even more damage to the economy in the long term, because of the high costs of opening and then inevitably closing again–as other states are now having to do.
I agree with your concerns, especially as we’re seeing an exponential increase in infections on the mainland.
If anything, we should be doubling down on our existing quarantine requirements. Keeping our infection rates low while they’re spiking on the mainland will make us a very attractive destination, even for tourists who need to quarantine upon arrival.
If we loosen our entry requirements, we’re likely to also see a spike in infections, which will likely cause a re-tightening of all sorts of restrictions that will cost jobs in non-tourist businesses like dentists and hair salons. It will also make us much less attractive to tourists.
For those who place their utopian tourist-free retirement dreams over human lives — try to remember that the homeless are messy and un-hygenic and there are lots and lots of homeless in your utopia.
125K (not 125M) people psm x .77 sq mi = 96K people in Waikiki
http://files.hawaii.gov/dbedt/economic/databook/2013-individual/01/012013.pdf
Anonymous is correct, of course. Table 1.20 of the 2017 Data Book shows Waikiki’s daily de facto population density for 2010 as 125,159.6 per square mile. That includes 96,949.8 visitors, plus a resident population of 29,814.5 with 1604.7 temporarily absent on average. It does not count (but lists separately) tens of thousands of employed persons also present each day. All packed into 0.77 square miles.
Sloppy typing, and thanks for the correction. My point, however, still stands.
I recently flew home to Honolulu, and am hunkered down in quarantine. I came from Norway, where the virus is just about dealt with, so I certainly left in perfect health, but travel included an overnight layover in LA and at least one leg where the flight was packed and mask wearing not well enforced. If I caught anything it would have been while in transit, and not picked up by a test 72 hours before or even on arrival.
The monitoring during quarantine is pretty minimal, one short phone call every day (and they would have accepted my cell number instead of my landline, so I could be anywhere). Its success relies on good faith on the part of the traveler. Moreover, even this won’t scale: if we go back to normal tourist traffic, and monitor even for just a few days, it will require hiring several hundred new people to man the phone banks.
Honestly, I don’t understand how the powers that be expect this opening up to work.