Utah Might Not Be the Place to Be

I am rethinking going to Salt Lake City for Tomiko & David's wedding. Here in Hawaiʻi, 60.4% of the population is fully vaccinated; in Utah it is around 50%. We have a mask mandate; Utah does not. We have limits on gathering sizes; Utah does not. Today's information on variants here shows the Delta variant has now increased to about 80%; the Delta variant in Utah was at 80% one month ago. The Delta variant is much more contagious & has been driving the surge in new cases that is being seen around the country. Because of the Delta variant, even with all that we have going for us, our daily new case numbers are increasing greatly from just under 100 a day three weeks ago to over 300 a day in the last week. Utah is not looking like a COVID-safe place to be right now. And its not going to be getting better any time soon. Right now Utah is at about 1200 new cases a day, we are at about 350; Utah has about 3.4 times more new cases per day than we do for a population that is only about 2.2 times larger than ours. Auē!

This graph is a little funky but the take away is that Utah is at about 50% fully vaccinated.

The projection for next week is 5049 new cases for the week (~720/day).

The projection for next week is 2275 new cases for the week (~325/day).

The other reason I decided not to go is that I am going to return via Hawaiʻi Island; I planned on spending a week there to complete the things that went unfinished because we were running around trying to keep Sarah & Kaia safe. There has only been 1 case of COVID-19 in that part of the island since the start of the pandemic; I did not want to take any chances of bringing anything in with me. Interestingly, that case was last year during a period when I was there in July; word traveled faster about it being present than it showed up in official public data!

When I got to work this morning & started making calls I discovered there were so many new cases that came in on Tuesday that we were still finishing up those calls this morning! I made a total of 50 calls today & interviewed 29 people. Of those I talked with, 20 were from the cases that came in on Monday, 9 were from Tuesday's cases. Of the people I talked with, 11 were vaccinated (38%).

Dave told us today that OmniTrak's contract has been renewed & expanded; he said it was a reflection of our good work. We will now be doing the First Calls for all islands. Dave said OmniTrak will also now be doing the data entry in the MAVEN data system for the completed forms; initially it will be Dave & Alan trained on the system, with them later training some of us to do the data entry. I asked if there was a possibility of doing the data entry remotely, he said not at this time but there might be something available when I move to Hawaiʻi Island. I'll just have to wait & see what happens.

For lunch I went to Water Drop; the fact that it is right across the street is most appealing. Even if I don't really know what it is that I am getting. Or how spicy it might be. Today one dish was labeled as "Home Style Tofu Stew," it was pretty good but initially looked like it would be too hot for me. I picked out a bunch of hot peppers from it. The other was called "Stir Fried Vegetables", I don't think they change the label; today's version had nice chunks of eggplant & tofu.

Clockwise from top left: stir fried vegetables, Home Style Tofu Stew, & Noodles with Stir Fried Vegetables.

Traffic on the way home today was much different than it was on Sunday. Here's a photo of today's traffic; it's not quite from the same location but you can still see the difference.

I was at about location of greenish-yellow car when I took the Sunday photo.

I had a 2-course dinner tonight. For the 1st course I had lup cheong & roasted root vegetables with the cauliflower from Kokua. For the 2nd course, I had more lup cheong with some noodles from lunch.

This is the 2nd course, I forgot to take a picture of the 1st course.

The Mana Road Fire must be pau. I have not been able to find any news about it.

I forgot to get a screen shot of the Aix weather app this morning. And I can't really remember what it was forecasting for the day. But it started out here partly cloudy. I also neglected to get on the web cam sites while there was still light enough to see what was going on so there are no screen shots of those either.

In Kaimukī at 6:16 a.m.

Nā Koʻolau at 8:38 a.m.

Hilda is still a Tropical Storm though it is forecast to steadily weaken over the next few days. Tropical Depression Nine-E has now shown up on the Central Pacific graphic; even though it existed earlier they had not included it in the Central Pacific graphic until today. (It was in the Eastern Pacific graphic all along.) Nine-E is forecast to strengthen to a tropical storm over the next couple of days before weakening again to a depression. As long as any of these show up on the Central Pacific graphic, I will post what I can so you know what's happening out here in the middle of nowhere.

This one is closer to us; at 140*W it will be about 5 days away from us.

There was a magnitude 4.9 earthquake in Mexico. It did not generate a tsunami.

There were 346 new cases of COVID-19 reported today, bringing the total known cases up to 43,962. There were no new deaths reported so the death toll remains at 538; currently 3,988 cases are considered active. There have been 1,767,912 doses of vaccine administered as of yesterday, making 60.4% of the population fully vaccinated and providing 67.4% with at least one dose. 

Hauʻoli lā Hānau e Mark, Sego, Hendra, & Jessica!