UHERO’s Carl Bonham Speaking to the State House Select Committee on COVID-19 (April 20, 2020)

The biggest question regarding opening economy to. Tourism is, HOW ARE YOU GOING TO EFFECTIVELY TEST EVERY SINGLE PERSON COMING TO OUR STATE? Because if you let them in, they will bring the virus to every island. Tourists are coming from all sorts of places. Just looking at all the states where most of the population don’t care about guidelines, are breaking the rules/laws & blatantly say they don’t care & you can’t stop me because it’s my right? Some of those people will travel here. Unless you have an effective test or vaccine, I see the virus out of control here very quickly. I live on the Big Island, spent 3 nights at our local hospital in Waimea where there was 1 nurse tending to 20 patient beds. It was not nice. Please tell me how the outer islands can effectively sustain & or treat a breakout? Open our economy to our local people & that’s it. I say please let’s wait until there is something at the boarding gate that assures Hawaii stay virus free. I see a nightmare in the making if we allow tourists to come back. We have done a great job marketing ourselves as a tourism mecca with nothing to fallback on when things go bad & this is the result. My husband read somewhere that the islands are being marketed like this “ come to Hawaii, the safest place to be”. Not sure if this came from the tourism authorities & he couldn’t remember. I’ve lived here 40 & I’ve seen how efficiently the BI has built condos, timeshares, etc. Then there is the person who lives on the mainland & does short term vacation rental. It goes on & on, all to the detriment to local people. Personally, I’ve always thought Hawaii should have a “quota” system when it comes to living here. After all, we are just a small group of islands whose resources will always be limited. Let tourists pour in with no effective test before they board & we will be inviting trouble on a large scale.