Mostly Maskless in Hawaii

[canyonwalker]

Hawaii April Travelog #25
Waikoloa - Wed, 13 Apr, 2022, 9pm

Wearing masks really isn't a thing in Hawaii. Over the past few days in Honolulu and now in Kailua-Kona and Waikoloa I've seen voluntary mask wearing in public indoors spaces such as grocery stores and hotel common areas is only about 5%. Back home  voluntary masking is still at about 90% in the grocery stores I frequent in Sunnyvale and Mountain View.

The lax attitude toward public health out here doesn't shift our plans too much. Most of the activities we're here for are outdoors anyway. We're eating few meals at restaurants, and when we do we favor sitting outside anyway. When we shop at grocery stores we wear our masks for the amount they protect us. Really masks are about protecting others from you... but sadly in the modern up-is-down, black-is-white politics of the US, the common understanding has become that masks are to protect yourself, if you're scared. 🙄

Comments

[glossy_mat_finish]

N95 masks offer more protection for the wearer, but finding them isn't easy.

KN95 are supposed to be just as good, but it's said that a percentage of KN95 masks may be knockoffs and may not be as effective as claimed.

[canyonwalker]

Even good quality cloth masks provide decent protection. And the best mode of protection is when everyone wears a mask so that those who are contagious but don't know it yet are vastly less likely to infect others.

[some_other_dave]

Part of what you saw in HI is a reaction to the governor having just lifted the mask mandate pretty much as you arrived. They've been stricter about masks than many places, and the case numbers haven't been that high because of the isolation of the islands. The requirement for vaccines and/or negative tests before you could even land in the state also helped.

The downside is it seems to have bred a fair amount of complacency. And now that masks aren't going to be required on most airlines or in many airports, I can only think that it will get worse.

[canyonwalker]

I was actually thinking about that when we first arrived. There are a lot of anti-mask zealots out there who refused to travel to "communist" places that would "restrict their freedoms" with mask mandates. Once the requirements were dropped these people felt welcome to come. That seemed to be happening in Las Vegas when I was there several weeks ago. Mask requirements had just been dropped, and the city was being flooded with people who consider Covid a nonfactor.