On this last day in April I am ready to shout: “Mayday!” – does not refer to May Day as lei day here on the beautiful garden island, something we have always enjoyed, but in the old sense of war, related to imminent danger.
May Day! an English play on the French word “m’aider” (help me) is the worldwide emergency call via radio. Almost everyone knows Mayday! An emergency call used worldwide is an emergency call that is transmitted by radio, usually on a ship or airplane. May Day! signals a life-threatening emergency; the procedure is to say it three times in a row. The alternative SOS emergency call is usually a Morse code transmission by telegraph.
I’ve been under the radar since retiring from writing the Green Flash columns in early 2020, doing other work, and following the social distancing and staying home rules since they came into effect. But today it’s back to the newspaper: My emergency call (re: island in danger of death): Mayday! May Day! May Day! And SOS SOS SOS… on the latest headlines from TGI page 1: “THE TEAM REOPENED KAUA’I”, “Economic restart” (leads on Wednesday, April 29th); and today, Thursday, April 30th, “RULES RESTRUCTURING”.
OK I get it. Our mayor has so far been an excellent “father” to all of his island cupuna, cohorts and children and through his mandates has really ensured that we are protected from the real threat posed by the coronavirus in the form it is now assuming with the known disease as COVID-19. He hit every other Mayor and Governor Ige to the limit and looked at the results as reported: “Kaua’i Covid-19 Count, 0 Active Cases, 21 Recovered Returned Home, 21 Total Confirmed Cases.”
Because of this health success, I also understand that the time has come to open up certain activities and businesses that serve the needs of our community and lead people back to a normal island lifestyle – that is, masked. BUT … where is our critical thinking when it comes to opening up to visitors and tourism again? Before we have an effective vaccine in hand? Since when has our economy been more important than being coronavirus-free and staying alive?
A quick look at each newscast will reveal the wisdom behind the Kawakami mandates of the past few weeks, some of which made it highly undesirable for visitors to come during the pandemic. Sure, that hurts because your dollars feed our “golden egg” tourism economy that supports many people on this island. A small minority of people resisted having their freedoms illegally withdrawn by letter and demonstration. Somehow they missed the point of establishing emergency rules for the “higher good” that went beyond the individual I-I-and-my-need-consciousness.
If anyone really wants to learn more about the reality of the threat posed by the evolution of COVID-19, an excellent NetFlix special explains the facts behind it. The documentary uses experts in their fields to tell how the pandemic was a definitive prediction based on knowledge of what is being done to learn to deal with virus attacks that “jump” from animals to humans, like the virus “Works” and maps the exponential factor once it has found the way to live in a human and ensure that it is passed on to other human beings as necessary hosts. You can learn a lot from visiting popular US “best” hospital websites like the Cleveland Clinic and Johns Hopkins.
The documentary presents an interesting chart comparison from the early 20th century that shows how the pandemic flu was contained or started between the careful rules in St. Louis, Missouri, and the carefree, late rules in Philadelphia. Also of interest are the reports of the current 24/7 race to develop a vaccine and contain the deadly tide – similar to what happened when science and medicine learned how to stop or reduce deadly influenzas, smallpox, tuberculosis, and other attacks or viruses by vaccination.
With the idea that our state and county will soon be open to visitors again, I think of how the St. Louis facts started a second wave of disease in the pandemic of 20. Although this wave never peaked with the thousands of deaths in Philadelphia, it lasted for many months longer and claimed many lives even in its flattened representation.
Thinking critically, we are at this point on Kaua’i now. Usually I’m not a writer who prophesies the end of the world, but if you open yourself up to visitors now, no doubt such a devastating story will repeat itself regardless of the 14 day quarantine rules. These rules are undoubtedly being bent and broken, and they definitely cannot be enforced with the current structure of our community.
Remember: Even if visitors from conscientious hotel and grocery merchants or shop owners and private individuals are reported “on the loose”, it is said that the cat is already out of the bag. Who knows how many opportunities for a latent germ to spread – possibly unknowingly – occurred between the time a visitor was quarantined and their arrest?
Following this idea, I think of the couple who were reported and fined for breach of quarantine. They were warned at the airport to go straight to their accommodation; next when visiting a Lihu’e grocery store; and then back to shopping at a Princeville grocery store.
Ridiculous. If someone were the carrier of the coronavirus, this germ could have been spread into the air on a toilet surface, shopping cart handle, or other means before any kind of concern arose. And really, how can we who live here possibly expect someone arriving on a long flight to immediately get into a 14 day quarantine and bypass human needs for food, drink and other needs like drug store items before they do hide in his accommodation? Not everyone goes to a hotel with room service. Also take into account rental car or taxi and Uber / Lyft drivers, restaurant and shop staff, room cleaners and other hotel and apartment agents who inevitably come into contact with visitors, even masked and somewhat aloof.
Until here an effective vaccine, as I see it, is readily available and unless we have mandatory visitor accommodation (an offshore ship “island” like in the past?), Of course we cannot have visitors in our Kaua’i -Admit and lose community again without opening up to a second devastating wave of threats, a wave far more dangerous and life-threatening than the one that the new tiered association of our lifeguards focused on -Up promotion of beach / ocean safety warnings.
Like pilots watching themselves crash, I shout Mayday loud and clear! May Day! May Day! SOS! to our decision makers … HELP!
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Dawn Fraser Kawahara is a resident of Wailua Homesteads.
