Please get vaccinated
Dear unvaccinated people,
I appreciate your anti-authoritarian spirit, I really do. I believe in “Don’t Tread on Me.” But since the vaccines came out last January, 40 times as many unvaccinated people have died from COVID than vaccinated people. In a way, this is Natural Selection in action and I am not sorry for those who refuse to accept reality.
But, there is more than just your own well-being to be concerned about here — there are children’s lives on the line. Children younger than 5 are not eligible for vaccinations and you are putting them in danger. The way it works is this: if there were no unvaccinated adults, there would be much less virus circulating in our community. That would make it much less likely that children would catch it. That’s why people say we are all in this together, because what you do affects other people – in this case, unvaccinated children.
So far, 230 children under 5 have died from COVID in the U.S., and over 2,000 have been hospitalized. There are also about 3 million people whose immune systems are impaired and cannot be fully immunized. They are also relying on the rest of us to protect them from exposure. If you care at all about any of these people, please get vaccinated.
Matt Binder
Waimea
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Let’s do the right thing
Who speaks for the nai’a? What do they want? Do you honestly believe dolphins enjoy having a multitude of people with their sun tan lotion bodies invading their resting place? Do they enjoy being pursued from one end of the bay to the other by people who want to play with them, touch them, grab onto to their dorsal fin and try to ride them?
Do they appreciate being disturbed from their rest or their time socializing with each other by people with cameras who want to take pictures of them or stream videos to make money?
People who swim with the dolphins have ruined it for those who truly just want to swim for exercise. They now claim their right to access the ocean will be impacted by the time area closures and how education is the better option. For the past 30 years that NOAA has tried to protect the dolphins were they trying to educate those who are ignorant of the dolphins’ need to rest undisturbed? No. They were teaching tourists and other visitors to our bays how to pick a bunch of leaves from the shore and take it out to the pod for the dolphins to play with. Teaching people when it is the best time to go to the beach to swim with the dolphin and calling their network of friends as soon as they see the dolphin pod enter the bay, tired after a night of feeding and eluding danger.
Let NOAA establish a time area closure zone and for once, let’s do the right thing. Give the dolphin at Kauhako Bay an opportunity to decide if they want to play with the multitude of humans who will be waiting outside of the rest area with their sun tan lotion bodies, cameras, and leaves.
Damien Kenison
Honaunau
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