Two weeks have passed since Hawaii put in place a mandatory 14-day quarantine for any newcomers to Hawaii. Roughly three weeks have past since we were ordered to work at home. Tonight marks a trial run at a nighttime curfew on Oahu from 11pm to 5am.
As of Friday we have 464 cases, with 7 confirmed deaths but 284 recovered patients. We have a tiny fraction of what the rest of the world has but our State is doing its damnedest to lock up the entire state fearing a multi-island wide disaster.
Other than the uncomfortable feeling of being to close to a stranger at the grocery store, life isn’t the doom and gloom CNN and Fox are making things out to be. The sun shines down on us, and despite some empty shelves, food is still plentiful and we still are holding on to a majority of our freedoms, yet they are growing more limited.
But due to a fanciful fear of an invisible virus, the State closed it all down. Our economy is in pain. The tourist industry has come to a grinding halt and unemployment has gone through the roof. People are beginning to feel the burn of no work.
A luxury shop in Waikiki stripped of her goods and shuttered during the closure of Hawaii.
My friends are getting restless. We’ve all had to adapt to these new conditions. We’ve made adjustments and those who can are working from home. They’re restless from their new prison planet and the uncertainty of what we can and cannot do. We are also all struggling with our new circumstances. My wife and I have been getting underneath each others skins a bit more than usual since she’s now home. A lack of privacy, frustration of not having your usual work space available, and boredom. Its a new normal for us, Hawaii, the US, and the world.
My wife’s new home office.
But we as a nation, without even a shot, surrendered our civil liberties in fear of an invisible enemy. We easily granted our governments the power to shut us in our homes and keep us off the streets. People are being ticketed and fined for breaking the mandates set by our liberal government in the name of keeping us all safe. There was even talk of the police using spike strips across roads to enforce the curfew. Videos all over social media are showing police acting irrationally because a person wasn’t wearing a mask on a bus or another person wouldn’t comply with social distancing mandates. What more will the powers at be expect from us to keep us safe?
Waikiki Beach empty of tourists during the corona virus episode.
Unless our infection numbers drastically increase in Hawaii, its going to be hard to agree with the State’s new found power of authority to keep us locked up. We need to get back to work to make money so we can pay or bills and keep our sanity. We did not vote to live in a nanny state but we all should take precautions to take care of ourselves and others. Quarantine those who are in need but let the masses get on with their lives.
A scattering of people near the Duke Kahanamoku Statue in Waikiki.