Dr. Ric also sent out information that Kokua Kalihi Valley Comprehensive Family Services is looking for contact tracers. He sent it to Cohort 1v2 and Cohort 2; he said since the DOH did not hire almost all the people trained, they should not feel obligated to wait for the DOH; he will send job opportunities out as they come across his desk.
I made a trip to Longs/CVS; they had chicken poppers on sale! Even though I got there on the 2nd day of the sale there were none. I got a rain check but when I got home I found the clerk put it down for the wrong item, rawhide chews (which there were plenty of) not the chicken poppers. Āue!
While I was out, I also went to City Mill to pick up flagging tape to mark the branches I want John to trim on the 'ohai ali'i when he is here the next time. I also picked up plastic sheeting (just in case we need to isolate a part of the house) and a pot of nasturtium starts. I planted the nasturtiums later when the sun was not beating down on the planting trough. I am hoping they can survive there and flourish to provide some color in the cat run. Keala kept me company while I was out there.
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| The nasturtiums are barely visible here due to the shadows. |
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| The stove grates are to keep her ball from rolling off the concrete area. |
I have been noting all the places I go out side the house on my Google Calendar. One of the things they taught us in the training was to ask people to get out their calendar to jog their memories about where they went and whom they might have been in contact with. So I decided to keep track of my activities; I am also color coding them in red so they stand out if I ever need to find them. I am keeping them on my calendar for 28 days; which is two COVID-19 incubation cycles. It makes more work for me but if I am ever in the situation LG Green is in I would like to make sure all the people that might be at risk are notified.
I was going to try to go to the Longs/CVS at Kahala Mall, but Papa ʻÕlelo Hawaiʻi was starting up again at 5 ke auinala. Or so I was told. It actually started at 5:30 so I could have made a really quick trip to see if I could find chicken poppers there.
The classes will run through the end of the UH fall semester. They will be on KTUH Honolulu Facebook Live every Monday from 5:30 to 6:30 pm. Their earlier classes and PowerPoint slides are archived here, so you can check them out, get caught up with class, and join me in learning Hawaiian! What was really cool with today's lesson was that I already knew a bunch of words from using the Duolingo app for the past year and a half or so.
These are nā kumu Paige and Ākea and their assistant Kama. They introduced themselves totally in ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi; we put our answers in the comments section.
Although I have been able to work in the old version of Blogspot most of the time, sometimes it acts up and I can't load photos, like now. I had trouble loading the rest of the slides for class so you will just have to do with these; which is too bad since I wanted to share the words I already knew! They also said that the streets in the Waipio Gentry area that Curtis lives in are named after rooms in a house. One that they highlighted was Lumiʻauʻau, it means bathroom; ʻauʻau means to bathe. One of the main thoroughfares in the area is Lumiʻaina, which means dining room. I already knew lumi kuke (kitchen) from Duolingo.
There is a disturbance about 900 miles southeast of us. It is not expected to form in to anything within the next 5 days. At the right edge of the graphic below, Tropical Storm Karina can be seen approaching; it is quite a bit east of the boundary for the Central Pacific region. It is not expected to become a hurricane within the next 5 days.
I started out the morning by reading an article by FiveThirtyEight, a statistical analysis website that examines politics, sports, and science. (It might be a little nerdy for some but you might want to take a peek at it.) The specific article I read was on why it has been difficult to come up with effective interventions for COVID-19. The bottom line is ... people. Policy makers have been asking social & behavioral scientists for help but it hasn't been easy. A big piece has been who is studied in the lab versus what the community outside the lab is really like; generally the studies are done on whiter, wealthier, more educated people than the general population (their description, not mine). Another piece is that what people tell them they do in the lab is not really what they do outside the lab.
In another article, the Kaiser Family Foundation found that 62% of people are concerned about a vaccine being released before it is thoroughly tested. This is a big concern of public health officials since having a significant number of people vaccinated may be the only way to get back to sort of normal without killing off a lot of the population that is elderly or has serious underlying medical conditions.
Today is the last day for surge testing . Although some were reporting that it was the end of the 2-week period for the surge testing, it was actually almost a 3-week period that started on August 26th. The Mayor reported that during the surge testing over 60,000 people were tested. There are an additional 30,000 tests that were not used that the city will use for high-risk populations and clusters outbreaks. Obviously our test positivity rate will now rise since testing will again be reserved for those suspected of being infected with the virus or having been in close contact with a positive case; we really need to get to the point that there are enough tests to test anyone at any time in order for us to get a better handle on this virus.
And finally, the pre-arrival testing program does not look like it will start up on October 1st. The Governor said he will make an announcement later in the week regarding a new date. The lack of the pre-arrival testing program doesn't mean no travelers are allowed in, it just means they have a mandatory 14-day quarantine they must complete before being able to freely roam around.
In an in depth interview today, LG Green answered more questions about his exposure and why he was seen in an interview on Friday without a mask. He said it is rare to be able to pinpoint when someone was exposed but he is pretty sure it was on the 1 hour drive from Kona Airport to Hāwī when he was in the car with 2 of his security detail; they momentarily removed their masks when drinking their coffee during the trip while they were in an enclosed space, closer than 6 feet, and for more than 15 minutes. The Kohala Hospital, where he was headed for his ER shift, did a major disinfection once they were informed and contact traced all persons the LG was in contact with during his shift. They also tested all staff and residents and all were negative; they will be retesting to catch anyone who was actually infected but not shedding virus at the time of the initial test.
There were 80 new COVID-19 cases reported today, bringing the total known cases up to 10,779; it is nice to be out of the triple digits for new cases. Hopefully that will hold. There were no new deaths reported today, but officials warned that paperwork for a bunch of cases at the veterans home on Hawai'i Island have not yet been added to the fatality list.
Hauʻoli lā Hānau e Norm, Maria, & Catherine!
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