A letter writer complained about the city limiting their ability to run their short-term vacation rental (“City would unfairly limit property owners’ rights,” Star-Advertiser, Sept. 22). The writer hails from California.

This highlighted exactly what’s wrong with our local real estate market. How many people have I run into who live in Hawaii part-time and either rent out their property as a short-term vacation rental or leave it empty? Meanwhile, our young people are fighting and scratching to buy something, anything, only to be outbid.

Real-estate speculators who flip houses and mainlanders who come in with cash make it nearly impossible for our children to raise their families in the state where they were born and raised. If you’re the out-of-state owner of a second home in Hawaii, I would like to see you taxed at such a high rate that it discourages this type of investment.

Otherwise, we will be a state full of people who are not 100% vested in making our communities their home, and our children and their families will be on the mainland.

Tina Shaffer

Kailua

Statistics should focus on hospitalizations

It’s time to start moving on. Sometime in the not-too-distant future, COVID-19 will become just another disease that we live with, not something requiring a daily statistical report.

As part of the process of moving on, it’s time to focus reporting on hospitalizations, not cases. “Flattening the curve” always was about managing finite health-care resources, not eliminating COVID-19.

The state Department of Health needs to put hospitalizations and ICU capacity front and center in its statistical reporting and analysis, with specific reference to the number of hospitalized cases of unvaccinated versus vaccinated individuals. The aggregate number of cases is no longer a useful guide to anything except bureaucratic inertia.

Brendon Hanna

Manoa

Open up Leahi Hospital for COVID-19 patients

With the decline in the number of COVID-19 cases and the easing up of the need for ICU beds, equipment and supplies, this is not the time to let our guard down. The shortage of medical personnel is still there.

Now is the time to seriously consider updating Leahi Hospital to handle most of the COVID-19 cases.

Moving forward as cases further decline, the hospital will be better equipped to handle our aging population. The University of Hawaii could make it a teaching hospital for certified nursing assistants, nurses and doctors. The hospital is sorely underutilized and would benefit from an infusion of private-pay patients, rental from nonprofit agencies specializing in seniors, and as a medical hub to augment the money the state is having to allocate every year to keep it open.

Ken Takeya

Kailua

Your rights end where the risk to others begins

The saying, “Your right to swing your arms ends where my nose begins” is now, “Your right to be unvaccinated ends where my right to be healthy begins.”

Opting for a weekly test means people can be spreading the virus for several days.

Some claim it’s against their religious beliefs, those beliefs being that things are so because they believe they are so. It’s a closed circle.

The “my body, my choice” rallying cry doesn’t seem to apply to Roe v. Wade, which continues to be chiseled away.

Parents who don’t get vaccinated or have their eligible children do so are seriously endangering them, 5.5 million children having been hospitalized.

Nationally, more than 90% of infected patients are unvaccinated, are much more seriously ill, and are more likely to die than those who received one or two shots — all preventable by a simple mask and a free 10-second shot.

Robert Stewart

Waikiki

GOP can’t believe that elections were rigged

The Arizona election audit showed that Joe Biden gained more votes than reported (“Draft of Arizona GOP’s election review finds Biden won,” Star-Advertiser, Top News, Sept. 24).

Is the GOP embarrassed? I think not. They are now moving on to Texas and also want to audit Michigan, Florida and Alabama.

The Democrats push back and accuse the GOP of fighting against democracy and being un-American. The GOP smiles and says, “No, we need to protect democracy and ensure every vote was legitimate, so we audit.”

The Republicans are willing to spend millions of dollars to audit all of the mail-in ballots. They are not looking for more votes for Donald Trump. They are not looking for massive fraud because they understand there is none.

I believe the audits are not intended to overturn the 2020 election, but to steal the mailing lists of all registered voters.

Benjamin Toyama

Ewa Beach

Red Hill tanks take priority over radar

I was excited by the headline about $2 billion being dedicated to Red Hill, until I read that the funds are for a radar warning system, not the aging storage tanks (“Defense bill pushes $2B radar, Red Hill inspection,” Star-Advertiser, Sept. 25).

The warnings about the military’s fuel tanks have been sounded for years, unheeded.

Better to invest in moving those tanks and saving the island’s water resources than in building a system that just might inform us that we are about to be vaporized.

Both are threats of terrible outcomes, and both could be averted, but the poisoning of a main Oahu aquifer is one that looms right now.

M. Puakea Nogelmeier

Kalihi Valley

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