Wow! We are truly living in challenging times. I’m sending prayers of compassion, tolerance, patience and increased aloha. We can all use additional heaping doses.

Of all the places and people I’ve visited and met, Hawaii has that extra- special human quality of love, endurance, kindness, smiles and optimism, especially during these trying times of COVID-19. The news teams from various television stations truly set the tone of aloha and “half-full” perspective each day. Smiles and smiles across the lines of communications really encourage everyone to keep their chins up and be of good cheer.

Everyone from first responders, medical staff, retail and restaurant workers, bus drivers, cab drivers, the clergy and others, all have the special glow of aloha to keep us moving forward and not giving up.

I am truly lucky to live Hawaii, but blessed to be with like-minded people who show their true aloha when times get tough.

Efrem Williams

Aiea

Burden of teaching falls hardest on parents

As a parent on Hawaii island, I am sick and tired of the teachers union members getting paid for sitting on their backsides while we are left to teach our kids. We are given a website for them to use. No instructions, no follow-up, nothing. We parents are having to develop our own curriculum and do our own testing, while they get paid and take jobs tutoring. We should get the salary for teaching. I’m a very unhappy grandmother.

Antoinette Ortiz

Laupahoehoe

Teachers should be allowed to telework

Mahalo to Corey Rosenlee, president of the Hawaii State Teachers Association, for recognizing the hypocrisy of our state for limiting gatherings but allowing students and teachers to meet in groups of much larger than five people for long periods of time.

According to researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital, children and young adults, often with mild symptoms or asymptomatic, had higher levels of COVID-19 than sicker adults.

Many teachers now are required to apply to telework, which requires the approval of their complex area superintendents. Why is decision-making on this critical issue left in their hands? Are they doctors? Scientists? Do they have any “skin” in the game? Do they believe enough in the safety of their recommendations to work alongside their teachers for a day and walk in their shoes?

If Gov. David Ige and Mayor Kirk Caldwell are really serious about slowing the spread of COVID-19, they should re-evaluate the opening of schools now.

Jo Kanehiro

Kailua

DOH’s many failures led to state’s health crisis

It is beyond appalling to discover the numerous failures of the state Department of Health (DOH) during the current economic and pandemic crises.

Not divulging all data, refusing or not spending state and federal funds, not employing hundreds of trained contact tracers waiting to be deployed: There are more than enough failures that warrant a full investigation, beginning with Health Director Bruce Anderson.

This sounds as chaotic as something President Donald Trump would do. The DOH’s failure is the smoking gun to all of our state’s infection rates and deaths. Lives could have been saved if it weren’t for the DOH’s neglectful actions and its incompetence.

Han Song

Kaneohe

Businesses suffering, need help quickly

Some people in Hawaii are thriving through the pandemic and the restrictions imposed by the government. There are also people who have sacrificed their businesses and savings due to the policies put forth.

Any business that serves people in gatherings has been devastated. Those who are affected are being ignored and need attention and help financially. The aid that was available earlier has been long gone, used up, and without more substantial funds and freezes of the ever-accruing bills, all will be lost for a segment of the economy.

It is unfair that the public sector has not sacrificed equally and the affected private sector has been left to wither and die. The state and city governments have to be sensitive to the plight of our local businesses. Please hurry!

Eric Phillips

Kapahulu

Protest mismanagement of U.S. Postal Service

My family, friends and I are terrified and disgusted by the efforts of the Trump administration to corrupt, handicap and insult our beloved U.S. Postal Service.

Please publish an editorial not only expressing our common outrage, representing all of us who depend daily on the post office, and condemning the nefarious, self-serving and dangerous activity on many levels; but also please advise us on ways we can help our neighborhood postal workers and the great institution they represent, such as ways we can physically volunteer to help them get the mail out in a timely manner, if necessary, or even donate money to assist their sacred task.

The Trump administration’s blatant subterfuge is an obvious evil and it’s scaring us to death.

Jim and Lisa Nakata

Kaneohe

Absentee balloting OK, but not if it’s universal?

President Donald Trump says that absentee vote-by-mail is just fine (he does it every year) but that universal vote-by-mail, in which every voter is allowed to vote by mail, is wrong and susceptible to fraud, that foreign nations “or others” (Democrats?) will print millions of fake mailings and make the election completely rigged and untrustworthy.

If those nefarious actors can do that for universal vote-by-mail, they can also do it for absentee vote-by-mail. So why is one safe and the other dangerous?

Roger Garrett

Kapahulu

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