A recent letter writer bemoaned Hawaii’s “overreaction” to the COVID-19 pandemic, and advised against similar measures in the future (“Overreacting won’t help in next disease outbreak,” Star-Advertiser, March 20).
The writer cited Hawaii’s relatively low death rate during the pandemic as evidence of its mildness, but ends up refuting his point: States like ours, which instituted more stringent social distancing and vaccination measures, had much lower disease and death rates than states that did not.
Globally, many Asian countries which quickly instituted such measures had much lower COVID-related death rates than here in the U.S., where we led the world with more than 1 million deaths.
Unfortunately, we didn’t learn a vital lesson from the Spanish flu epidemic, in which the cities of St. Louis and Philadelphia started with similar death rates. Unlike St. Louis, Philadelphia did not implement social distancing, and ended up with an eightfold higher death rate and slower economic rebound than St. Louis.
Lucky we live Hawaii!
Ravi Reddy
Kailua
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