Out of the Box

There have been some problems with traffic jams at the surge testing sites. Even with the pre-registration and appointment times there have been long lines, some stretching on to the freeway & creating unsafe situations. So the Governor and the department of transportation have come up with a novel testing location: the H-3 freeway tunnels! A portion of the freeway leading up to and exiting the Harano Tunnels in both directions will be closed off to regular traffic. Apparently there is 5 miles of freeway leading up to the tunnels from both sides that do not have any entrances or exits so a line of stopped cars would not create a hazard. The H-3 site will be open on Tuesday and Thursday next week for the surge testing.



Today was the last day of Week 5; only one more week of training left for the Community Contact Tracer Training. Our morning speaker was Liza Simon-Tuiolosega, speaking about Communication in the Time of COVID-19. She also talked about social media and how to talk to people who believe everything in their social media feed.


In the afternoon we started with Dr. Albie Miles, speaking on Sustainable Community Food Systems. He showed how the food system is affected by climate change and how the pandemic is related to climate change. Under normal conditions we have only 5 to 7 days worth of food supplies in the state; if this were a natural disaster that damaged infrastructure we would be in a dire situation like Puerto Rico after the hurricanes. Dr. Miles said the native Hawaiians pre-colonization were easily supporting nearly the same size population as we have today using low tech native food production methods. He said there is hope that the changes we are having to make because of the pandemic will keep us moving towards food self sufficiency.


He was followed by Dr. Manulani Meyers, speaking on Effulgent Coherence: Native Hawaiian Culture and This Moment in Time. She spoke on how Hawaiian culture has survived numerous epidemics since the arrival of Captain Cook; about 80% of the population was wiped out by disease in about 30 years. Now there are numerous programs based on Hawaiian culture that are helping to restore native culture and wisdom.


One of the programs Dr. Meyers talked about was the spirit of surfing and its healing power. I know when I tried surfing I really enjoyed it and would have really gotten in to it except I can't see very far ahead without my contacts.


I had an email from Mac Made Easy; they had called in the middle of class yesterday but I did not recognize the number so I didn't answer. They finished the diagnostics on my laptop earlier than expected. The problem is the GPU module on the logic board; it needs to be replaced. Getting the new part usually takes 2 to 5 days, but they're not sure how long it will be right now. I told them to go ahead with the repair.

There is a disturbance about 900 miles southeast of us. It is expected to continue slowly moving westerly and has only about a 20% chance of becoming a more organized system within the next 5 days.


There were 265 new cases today for a total of 7830 known positive cases; of those 5361 are active cases. I misspoke on Wednesday when I was figuring out how many of the 4921 active cases each contact tracer would have; the investigators handle the active cases. Contact tracers would handle the close contacts of the active cases; which could mean twice as many or more people!

The number of existing ICU beds has now been added to this graph.

Hau'oli la Hanau e Sili!