Ocean Pointe O&E

*I had written about half of this post with brief notations for the other half; no photos had been inserted although they were all downloaded to the laptop. Then on 10/09 the laptop decided it had enough with my ignoring its warnings about not enough memory & quit working. I got it back up & running on 10/14 but discovered I had lost the photos from September & October, hence the limited visual stimulation in this post. This was 1 of 4 posts from September that I was still trying to complete when the laptop went down.

I volunteered with the PHNs again this afternoon doing vaccine outreach & education. We were in Ewa Beach today at the neighborhood around the Ocean Pointe Community Association where there will be a vaccine clinic this Saturday. The outreach today was to encourage people to get vaccinated & answer any questions that they might have; I was partnered with Tom, a retired divorce attorney. We rang 25 doorbells and talked to 12 people; 3 of them declined to answer the survey about how many people had been vaccinated in their household. Two of those 3 said they were not getting vaccinated; one just didn't want to talk to us. 

We canvassed the houses within the yellow line.

I thought the most interesting person was the unvaccinated guy who tried to downplay the effectiveness of the vaccine by saying vaccinated people were still getting COVID-19; Tom said yes but they were less sick, like his friend who was vaccinated & then got COVID. Tom pointed out how 95% to 99% of the people here that are on ventilators or dying are unvaccinated. The guy then changed the subject to wondering why kids are allowed to go back to school if they can't be vaccinated; I jumped in to that conversation. I brought up information from studies saying that Zoom distance learning was not as effective as in person learning. Interestingly, he agreed that distance learning was not good for kids & they needed to be back in school; I'm not sure how his logic linked the desire to remain unvaccinated with kids needing to go back to school in person. I am not sure if he will get vaccinated this weekend but I think we gave him things to think about that he might not have thought about before. It might just move him a little closer to getting vaccinated.

Kai's colonoscopy was today. Later he said he needs to make a follow-up appointment to discuss next steps, probable cause, etc.

A UH study has found that tourists are willing to pay more for an authentic & sustainable experience. The study found that tourists were willing to pay more to participate in activities such as working on a kalo farm or rebuilding a Hawaiian fish pond as well as supporting local agriculture. With the pandemic the tourist industry had already been talking about changing their marketing towards a more eco-friendly & culturally-conscious clientele; this study now supports their intuition that the concept would be sustainable. I have one reservation about this, though. Will this attract primarily people with the white savior mentality?

I did not have the Aix graphic inserted so I lost that, but I did have a note about the Honomū weather station; it had recorded 0.20 inches of precipitation by 8:58 a.m.

By now people who have been vaccinated know that the card created by the CDC is an inconvenient size; it does not nicely fit in the standard card slot in a wallet. Time Magazine asked several graphic designers  to come up with a better idea. Here are a couple of their ideas. 

Credit card-sized with a QR code linking to vaccine database.

Front of credit card sized card with braille.

This is back, it is folded with additional info in center portion.

Credit card sized paper card for ease/cost of production.

Back of card.

There were 280 new cases of COVID-19 reported today, bringing the total known cases up to 76,191. Therewere no new deaths reported so the death toll remains at 714; currently 7197 cases are considered active. As of yesterday there were 1,1968,774 doses of vaccine administered, providing 66.6% of the state populations with full vaccination & 75.1% with one dose. There are 284 patients that are hospitalized with 77in the ICU and 59 on ventilators. The 7-day new case average for Oʻahu is 318 with a positivity rate of 6.3%.

Hauʻoli lā Hānau e Joan, Terri, & Pramila!