One of My Heroes

I had the privilege today of speaking to a woman who is one of the heroes of this pandemic; she is a traveling nurse with FEMA who goes to various states to provide relief to overworked local medical personnel. She is a respiratory therapist, the ones who help severely ill COVID-19 patients to continue breathing. She thinks she became infected with SARS-CoV2 while she was traveling from her previous assignment to her home state for a brief rest before being deployed here. She said as she was walking off the plane here she started feeling unwell so she immediately went to her hotel room, isolated herself, contacted her supervisor, & got herself set up for a test. Fortunately she is vaccinated so she is not as sick as she might be & should be able to get back on the front line as soon as her 10-day isolation period is complete. Mahalo nui loa to all the wonderful people who are doing this admirable work all over the country!

Just before lunch I got an email from Gloria about helping the Public Health Nurses with the vaccine outreach & education event in Nānākuli tomorrow.

I was let out for lunch right at 12 noon; that made it difficult to find an unoccupied table. I ended up sitting at one of the tables in the smoking section of the lanai. There did not seem to be any smokers nearby, however, the remnants of their nicotine habit did make it a little smelly during lunch.

Yum! 😋

Yuk! 🤢

 

The dog that showed up at Curtis & Lori's house on Saturday has since come into their yard; because it is a relatively short-legged dog & the retaining wall is high it is now staying in their backyard. Jenny is the only one able to get close to it because she feeds it. One of the other neighbor's has been calling it Star, so that is now it's name. Anita is hoping that her dog Henry will accept her, if so, she will adopt Star.

Star. (Photo by Lori)

My friend Charlie sent me an article and photos of some cute owlets.

The Aix weather app forecast drizzle in Honolulu in the morning; there was none of that while I was outdoors. For Kapaʻau it forecast rain all day; the Honomū web cam showed partly cloudy skies & weather station recorded no precipitation. The Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope web cam also showed no clouds over Kohala Mountain. For Marysville it showed partly cloudy skies all day; that seemed accurate.

Kaimukī looking westerly at 8:03 a.m.

Honomū looking northerly at 8:04 a.m.

Marysville looking southerly at 8:04 a.m. HST.

Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope looking northwesterly at 8:05 a.m.

Nā Koʻolau at 8:34 a.m.

It looks like the south shore will have the best surf for the next few days.

Chunʻs Reef (N) at 8:10 a.m.

Waikīkī (S) at 8:05 a.m.

As it turns out, when I signed up to get what I thought was the USGS emails about the Hawaiʻi Volcano Observatory notices about Kīlauea's status, what I actually signed up for was to get all USGS notices about all volcanoes. In all parts of the world, not just the US. Here's what I got today that tipped me off on what was happening.

There were 455 new cases of COVID-19 reported today, bringing the total known cases up to 63,957; this is a partial count due to a lab reporting glitch. There were also 13 new deaths reported, increasing the death toll to 602; currently there are 10,911 cases considered active. As of yesterday, there were 1,869,996 doses of vaccine administered, providing 63.4% of the population with full vaccination & 71.6% with at least one dose. There are 438 COVID-19 patients who are hospitalized with 96 in the ICU & 77 on ventilators. The 7-day new case average on Oʻahu is 612 with a positivity rate of 8.8%.

Hauʻoli lā Hānau e Mary,  Justin, & Troy Jr.! A me ka Hauʻoli lā Hoʻomanaʻo makahiki kanahā kumamāwalu e Mike & Marilyn! A me ka Hauʻoli Hoʻomanaʻo makahiki ʻumi kumamāhā e Dave & Sheila!