Hawaii Governor David Ige made a couple of unusually direct appeals to travelers yesterday.

“Tourists should stay away from Hawaii, and residents should restrict travel to essential business only at least through the end of October,” Gov. David Ige said Monday, according to the Honolulu Star-Advertiser.

“I’m asking all residents and visitors alike to restrict travel, curtail travel, to Hawaii to essential activities only,” Ige said.

His comments reflect both concern with the new and dramatically higher levels of new Covid-19 cases, and rising hospitalization numbers which have left some medical facilties filled to capacity. There’s also a concern that while hotels are enjoying relatively high occupancy, visitors are finding restaurants operating at reduced seating capacity, creating long lines and extended waits, while other event venues are again facing strict limits on both indoor and outdoor events and gatherings.

We’ve been hoping to take a long-planned trip to visit friends and family near San Francisco in mid-September, and carefully watching how the current covid spike is playing out in places where we are hoping to spend time. Ige’s call to avoid non-essential recreational travel now puts us on the spot, along with many others, I’m sure.

What’s the proper response? If we ignore the governor’s call, are we aligning ourselves with irresponsible anti-maskers and dangerous anti-vaxxers, and suddenly becoming part of the problem ourselves?

It poses one of those ethical questions. While it may not matter whether we choose to make a less-than-essential trip to the mainland, if everyone makes the same choice, it would probably undercut attempts to get this surge in cases under control.

So how should we be processing the governor’s call to avoid travel?

[Update 8/25/2021: Today I’m cancelling the various parts of our previously planned September trip to California. After considering the different moving parts of the Covid-19 situation, including growing evidence fully vaccinated people can be asymptomatic carriers of the Delta variant–meaning they may not know they are infected but can spread it to others–we decided to heed Governor Ige’s call to defer nonessential travel at this time. Luckily, it’s a disappointment, but not a huge sacrifice for us. Thanks for sharing your thoughts.]

Longtime activist and thinker Bart Dame took to Facebook last week to look back at the “official” chart setting out the system of tiers for reopening from last year’s pandemic lockdown.

Remember this?

A 7-day average case count greater than 100 would put us back to Tier 1, pretty much locked down again. Oahu is now over 120 cases per day.

Bart then questioned how we are going to handle the situation if this surge caused by the Delta variant continues? At what point do we step back a bit? Here’s an excerpt from his FB post.

…what happens IF the infection and positivity rates continue to climb? Can we agree in advance upon objective metrics so we will know if/when we need to re-impose restrictions? Or has COVID fatigue swept away the ability to discuss this rationally?

Earlier this week, Honolulu Mayor Rick Blangiardi said quite definitively, and this is a direct quote: “Going back to Tier 4 is not an option.” He didn’t say, “I think we need to do what we can to suppress the spread of the virus because going back to Tier 4 would be undesirable.” No, he said it won’t happen. Irregardless, so to speak.

…But if the whole idea of setting up the Tier system was to establish objective targets and to remove the decision from the influence of a politician’s desire for popularity, we need to talk about what we need to do if the current March towards re-opening causes the rate of infections to climb. To rule out that discussion in advance is not the sign of a bold leader, but of a fool.

Thoughts?