Your Views for September 2

Subscribe Now Choose a package that suits your preferences.
Start Free Account Get access to 7 premium stories every month for FREE!
Already a Subscriber? Current print subscriber? Activate your complimentary Digital account.

‘Suffering needlessly’

I am so disappointed in so many people, especially here in Hawaii where caring about your friends, family, neighbors and community are core values. We should all be vaccinated by now!

Have you even given a thought to all of the consequences of this to others? I am an example — I have been waiting two years now for a hip replacement that really should have been done five years ago. This procedure has been cancelled, again, a week from the most recent surgery date because of the COVID surge.

I am in agonizing pain much of the time, and my life has shrunk down to sitting in a chair. Soon, I will be in a wheelchair.

I was an active and involved person not so long ago. I have no idea how long I will have to wait, and suffer, now.

My family is distraught about it, my spouse is deprived of his “real” wife, and I have almost no life at all.

Since I am a senior citizen, the loss of years of my life this way is crushing, and I am severely depressed, can’t sleep and sometimes pray for an end to it all.

And I know there are millions more like me suffering needlessly because of YOU, anti-vaccine people. You don’t hear about us, and probably don’t care that your actions have hamstrung the medical establishment until it is unable to care for the rest of us.

So, thanks a lot, and I dearly hope you get what you deserve!

Laura Buck

Hawaii Volcanoes National Park

Ridiculous policy

I was skeptical when I read on the internet about the transfer stations closing on alternate days due to COVID (call me crazy, but I tend to doubt what I read on Facebook), but when I drove by, I found this ridiculous policy was indeed true!

Are we to believe transfer stations are COVID hotspots, despite being outdoors and “contact” limited to 10-second spans of people more than 10 feet apart exiting their vehicle, tossing trash into the dumpster, and driving off?

As it is now, when the stations open at 6 a.m., there’s already a stack of trash piled up outside. Do you really believe people will pull up with their rubbish, find it’s the wrong day, and then dutifully take it back home again to return the next day?

I hate to think of the trash this policy will encourage to be dropped at the gate or along our roadways, which is already a problem, but will likely mushroom under this semi-closure.

I’d be interested to learn the logic and usefulness of this mandate.

Mary Serion

Ainaloa