![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shannon_aHawaii's vaccination rollout has literally been horrific, in large part because the state has decided to throw vulnerable populations under the bus to fill the ever-gluttonous maw of the tourism industry. So, in callous disregard for CDC guidelines, they opted to name non-essential groups like bartenders and concierges and timeshare salesman (and for that matter architects, IT professionals, and who-knows-what-else) as essential and let them cut in the vaccine line ahead of people with serious health conditions. In fact, Hawaii only identified three super dangerous conditions for early vaccines, and left the vast majority of people with kidney disease, HIV, asthma, and other conditions more likely to cause them to die out in the cold.
Which literally means that Hawaii chose for vulnerable people to die to get tourism going faster.
But, that's kind of been the trend throughout the pandemic. Hawaii has made it very clear that there's a deep cancer in the state that leads them to put tourists above residents. That's not something I'd really realized in my own 20 years of visiting here, not even in the previous 13 years, when I was family, not a tourist per se. But you live here and it becomes as obvious as the palm trees and the turquoise ocean.
It's pretty easy to see in the state's quarantine procedures.
Our island, Kauai, has a mayor who's been very uneven in his plague proclamations, varying between too strict, too dumb, and too lax, but he's the one mayor who has generally fallen on the side of protecting the population, and that shows. Except for 6 or so scary weeks in October and November, when Mayor Kawakami bent over for the tourism industry to let plague-carriers back on the island in a limited (but it turns out not sufficiently limited) way, anyone coming to Kauai has had to do a little bit of work. For the last three or four months we've had a good compromise: a 3 day quarantine and a second test after arrival. Not torturous, but enough to halt the community spread that began when Mayor Kawakami foolishly opened the island up more last fall.
The other islands? Not so much. They have their 14-day quarantine, but you can opt out with a pre-arrival test which is totally inadequate, and so they've all had pretty high quantities of COVID at various times, and it remains in the community on at least Oahu and Maui.
The result is really horrible when you consider the numbers.
Kauai has a population of 70,000, compared to 1.4M for the islands overall. So we've got almost exactly 5% of the overall population.
We've also had 1 COVID death. (My dad says one of his doctors said 2, but if so that other one has never been officially reported). Extrapolating that, there should be 20 deaths on the islands overall (or 40). The actual number? 460.
Now those other islands don't have some of the natural advantages that Kauai does, like being a smaller and more rural community, and thus having people who actually care about the community, unlike the sociopathy that naturally grows in larger cities (such as Honolulu).
But still, that's at least a few hundred citizens that those other islands sacrificed to keep their tourism open.
Unfortunately, our inconstant Mayor has once again wavered over to the side of the tourism industry. At the start of March he announced that as of April 5th the islands would be open with just the pre-testing that we already know is inadequate, that let something like 20 false negatives onto the island last Fall and quickly led to community spread, to our island's one death, and to a threat to our extremely limited (9) ICU beds.
Now there were doubtless some political reasons for this. Some representatives in the State House who were even deeper into the pockets of the tourism industry were advancing a new law that would disallow mayors (and even the Governor) from adjusting access to the islands based on COVID concerns. It would have been a disaster that would have led to the tourism industry killing even more residents. And, that seemed to get dropped as soon as Mayor Kawakami announced his return to "Safe" Travels. And, doubtless, Mayor Kawakami has been getting pressured the whole time by people who care more about bucks than lives.
But the result, that Mayor Kawakami stopped running with the finish line in sight, is deeply frustrating. Even moreso when you consider we were on the verge of new money coming in to help people and businesses and states impacted by economic losses.
Scientists have been very clear that there isn't yet enough vaccine in arms to actually slow the spread of COVID. So, we're now likely to get a repeat of last Winter, where COVID escapes into the community again and threatens the at-risk people who Hawaii has refused to give vaccination priority.
And all we had to do was wait a few months more.
Here's the one bright spot: Kauai is the one island that is getting more progressive in its vaccinations.
Kimberly and I noticed on Monday when the County started posting kind of weird announcements that you should sign up for for a vaccine as an essential worker, and if you didn't qualify, you'd be placed on their waitlist. Because it wasn't like the whole essential-workers thing was new.
I told Kimberly that she should sign up immediately, and I did the same. I hadn't quite twigged to what was going on yet, I just figured that we could drop everything and be in Lihue in 30 minutes at the drop of a hat if they suddenly had an unexpected opening.
But the next morning I found waiting in my email box a token to sign up for vaccinations, and after Kimberly filled out their quickly changing form a few more times, she did too.
When I looked at the vaccination signups, it became obvious to me that Kauai was constrained by the state's guidelines, and thus had been wasting vaccinations slots, so they were trying to find a technically allowed solution for that. Because the day I got my OK back, on Tuesday, I looked at the signups and there were slots that had gotten wasted that day (because I noticed my email too late to do anything), and there were about 100 slots available on Wednesday and over 150 on Thursday. So, Kauai was pretending to make a waitlist, but was also moving people off of it immediately.
So Kimberly and I signed up for the same slot on Thursday morning, and we were off ...
Cut to the vaccination clinic on Thursday morning.
There were quite a few people out there getting their shots yesterday, but it was well-administered.
It all happened at the War Memorial Convention Hall in Lihue, which I'd never been to, but seems like a medium-sized community center with an auditorium for a few hundred people.
The line out front was maybe 15-20 people deep. One volunteer moved up and down the line to make sure everyone had their pre-vaccination questionnaire filled out. We moved up and got checked in. A short time later, after a second short line, we met a second administrator just outside the hall, who double-checked our ID and gave us our vaccination card. Then it was inside, to a third line, and finally to the vaccinator.
My vaccinator told me that they didn't have cookies like they did out at the Veterans Hospital, but they could offer blue bandaids instead of clear/white ones. I was deeply disappointed over the lack of cookies, but did my best not to show it, and told her the vaccine and the blue bandaid were more than enough.
The vaccine was perhaps the most painless shot I'd ever had. My vaccinator wasn't as good with distracting me with meaningless conversation while sneaking up to stab me as most people giving me shots (or taking blood) are, but I literally didn't feel the needle.
Afterward it was on to line #4, which led into the auditorium, where Kimberly and I sat far from anyone else for 15 minutes to make sure we didn't keel over dead from the vaccine. (Because when you're giving vaccines to 70k people or 1.4M or 350M or 7.5B or whatever, some *will* have side effects. It's normal and expected, because statistics are real assholes.)
Administrator #3 wrote on a piece of paper when we could leave. I think mine said 9.47 or 9.49.
So Kimberly and I got in line at 9.10 for our 9.20 appointment, and we were back in Julie the Benz before 10.00. Not bad!
Side effects?
My arm has somewhat hurt ever since. Not bad, but noticeable, especially if I do something stupid like lean on a wall with that arm.
I was a little tired yesterday afternoon, and so did work that I could do while listening to music. When my dad came over and we worked on transitions for Kimberly's closet, that perked me up.
I was a little achey this morning from where I'd been sleeping.
So, stronger side effects than any vaccines I've had in years, but not particularly notable in the scheme of things. My only concern is that shot #2 might be worse, but so it goes. (COVID would be a lot worse, and could potentially lead to very long-term side effects.)
I am *thrilled* to be vaccinated, but also aware that it's about five weeks too late for what our mayor has done to our island. Because when we get tourists back in larger numbers on Monday, this first vaccination won't even have taken effect. Another week after that I'll have some immunity, but it'll still be another few weeks before I can get my second shot and two weeks beyond that that I should have my 94.5%.
And, we've clearly been seeing increased tourists already: selfish assholes who think that it's their right to have a fun vacation in the middle of a pandemic. I was out on the trails above Waimea Canyon last weekend and met at least half-a-dozen people who were clearly tourists (including flying-his-drone-in-the-canyon man and literally-dangling-out-over-the-canyon-for-a-selfie-holding-on-only-with-her-hands lady, who I was certain I was about to see plunge to her death). It made me nervous being anywhere close to them (and also made me aware that I should have walked those particular trails more while the tourists were gone, alas!).
On the bright side, Kauai has now been able to announce that they are opening vaccines to everyone 16+. That news came in a few hours after Kimberly and I got our vaccines yesterday. They must have been able to convince the state that their excess capacity was not going away.
The irony? That starts on April 5th, which is the exact same day that the tourists start flooding back on a swell of disease. So, that'd be vaccinations that are generally being made available six weeks too late.
Like I said, our mayor saw the finish line in the distance, and thought he'd won the race without getting there.
Might be some hard months ahead for our island.
Which literally means that Hawaii chose for vulnerable people to die to get tourism going faster.
But, that's kind of been the trend throughout the pandemic. Hawaii has made it very clear that there's a deep cancer in the state that leads them to put tourists above residents. That's not something I'd really realized in my own 20 years of visiting here, not even in the previous 13 years, when I was family, not a tourist per se. But you live here and it becomes as obvious as the palm trees and the turquoise ocean.
It's pretty easy to see in the state's quarantine procedures.
Our island, Kauai, has a mayor who's been very uneven in his plague proclamations, varying between too strict, too dumb, and too lax, but he's the one mayor who has generally fallen on the side of protecting the population, and that shows. Except for 6 or so scary weeks in October and November, when Mayor Kawakami bent over for the tourism industry to let plague-carriers back on the island in a limited (but it turns out not sufficiently limited) way, anyone coming to Kauai has had to do a little bit of work. For the last three or four months we've had a good compromise: a 3 day quarantine and a second test after arrival. Not torturous, but enough to halt the community spread that began when Mayor Kawakami foolishly opened the island up more last fall.
The other islands? Not so much. They have their 14-day quarantine, but you can opt out with a pre-arrival test which is totally inadequate, and so they've all had pretty high quantities of COVID at various times, and it remains in the community on at least Oahu and Maui.
The result is really horrible when you consider the numbers.
Kauai has a population of 70,000, compared to 1.4M for the islands overall. So we've got almost exactly 5% of the overall population.
We've also had 1 COVID death. (My dad says one of his doctors said 2, but if so that other one has never been officially reported). Extrapolating that, there should be 20 deaths on the islands overall (or 40). The actual number? 460.
Now those other islands don't have some of the natural advantages that Kauai does, like being a smaller and more rural community, and thus having people who actually care about the community, unlike the sociopathy that naturally grows in larger cities (such as Honolulu).
But still, that's at least a few hundred citizens that those other islands sacrificed to keep their tourism open.
Unfortunately, our inconstant Mayor has once again wavered over to the side of the tourism industry. At the start of March he announced that as of April 5th the islands would be open with just the pre-testing that we already know is inadequate, that let something like 20 false negatives onto the island last Fall and quickly led to community spread, to our island's one death, and to a threat to our extremely limited (9) ICU beds.
Now there were doubtless some political reasons for this. Some representatives in the State House who were even deeper into the pockets of the tourism industry were advancing a new law that would disallow mayors (and even the Governor) from adjusting access to the islands based on COVID concerns. It would have been a disaster that would have led to the tourism industry killing even more residents. And, that seemed to get dropped as soon as Mayor Kawakami announced his return to "Safe" Travels. And, doubtless, Mayor Kawakami has been getting pressured the whole time by people who care more about bucks than lives.
But the result, that Mayor Kawakami stopped running with the finish line in sight, is deeply frustrating. Even moreso when you consider we were on the verge of new money coming in to help people and businesses and states impacted by economic losses.
Scientists have been very clear that there isn't yet enough vaccine in arms to actually slow the spread of COVID. So, we're now likely to get a repeat of last Winter, where COVID escapes into the community again and threatens the at-risk people who Hawaii has refused to give vaccination priority.
And all we had to do was wait a few months more.
Here's the one bright spot: Kauai is the one island that is getting more progressive in its vaccinations.
Kimberly and I noticed on Monday when the County started posting kind of weird announcements that you should sign up for for a vaccine as an essential worker, and if you didn't qualify, you'd be placed on their waitlist. Because it wasn't like the whole essential-workers thing was new.
I told Kimberly that she should sign up immediately, and I did the same. I hadn't quite twigged to what was going on yet, I just figured that we could drop everything and be in Lihue in 30 minutes at the drop of a hat if they suddenly had an unexpected opening.
But the next morning I found waiting in my email box a token to sign up for vaccinations, and after Kimberly filled out their quickly changing form a few more times, she did too.
When I looked at the vaccination signups, it became obvious to me that Kauai was constrained by the state's guidelines, and thus had been wasting vaccinations slots, so they were trying to find a technically allowed solution for that. Because the day I got my OK back, on Tuesday, I looked at the signups and there were slots that had gotten wasted that day (because I noticed my email too late to do anything), and there were about 100 slots available on Wednesday and over 150 on Thursday. So, Kauai was pretending to make a waitlist, but was also moving people off of it immediately.
So Kimberly and I signed up for the same slot on Thursday morning, and we were off ...
Cut to the vaccination clinic on Thursday morning.
There were quite a few people out there getting their shots yesterday, but it was well-administered.
It all happened at the War Memorial Convention Hall in Lihue, which I'd never been to, but seems like a medium-sized community center with an auditorium for a few hundred people.
The line out front was maybe 15-20 people deep. One volunteer moved up and down the line to make sure everyone had their pre-vaccination questionnaire filled out. We moved up and got checked in. A short time later, after a second short line, we met a second administrator just outside the hall, who double-checked our ID and gave us our vaccination card. Then it was inside, to a third line, and finally to the vaccinator.
My vaccinator told me that they didn't have cookies like they did out at the Veterans Hospital, but they could offer blue bandaids instead of clear/white ones. I was deeply disappointed over the lack of cookies, but did my best not to show it, and told her the vaccine and the blue bandaid were more than enough.
The vaccine was perhaps the most painless shot I'd ever had. My vaccinator wasn't as good with distracting me with meaningless conversation while sneaking up to stab me as most people giving me shots (or taking blood) are, but I literally didn't feel the needle.
Afterward it was on to line #4, which led into the auditorium, where Kimberly and I sat far from anyone else for 15 minutes to make sure we didn't keel over dead from the vaccine. (Because when you're giving vaccines to 70k people or 1.4M or 350M or 7.5B or whatever, some *will* have side effects. It's normal and expected, because statistics are real assholes.)
Administrator #3 wrote on a piece of paper when we could leave. I think mine said 9.47 or 9.49.
So Kimberly and I got in line at 9.10 for our 9.20 appointment, and we were back in Julie the Benz before 10.00. Not bad!
Side effects?
My arm has somewhat hurt ever since. Not bad, but noticeable, especially if I do something stupid like lean on a wall with that arm.
I was a little tired yesterday afternoon, and so did work that I could do while listening to music. When my dad came over and we worked on transitions for Kimberly's closet, that perked me up.
I was a little achey this morning from where I'd been sleeping.
So, stronger side effects than any vaccines I've had in years, but not particularly notable in the scheme of things. My only concern is that shot #2 might be worse, but so it goes. (COVID would be a lot worse, and could potentially lead to very long-term side effects.)
I am *thrilled* to be vaccinated, but also aware that it's about five weeks too late for what our mayor has done to our island. Because when we get tourists back in larger numbers on Monday, this first vaccination won't even have taken effect. Another week after that I'll have some immunity, but it'll still be another few weeks before I can get my second shot and two weeks beyond that that I should have my 94.5%.
And, we've clearly been seeing increased tourists already: selfish assholes who think that it's their right to have a fun vacation in the middle of a pandemic. I was out on the trails above Waimea Canyon last weekend and met at least half-a-dozen people who were clearly tourists (including flying-his-drone-in-the-canyon man and literally-dangling-out-over-the-canyon-for-a-selfie-holding-on-only-with-her-hands lady, who I was certain I was about to see plunge to her death). It made me nervous being anywhere close to them (and also made me aware that I should have walked those particular trails more while the tourists were gone, alas!).
On the bright side, Kauai has now been able to announce that they are opening vaccines to everyone 16+. That news came in a few hours after Kimberly and I got our vaccines yesterday. They must have been able to convince the state that their excess capacity was not going away.
The irony? That starts on April 5th, which is the exact same day that the tourists start flooding back on a swell of disease. So, that'd be vaccinations that are generally being made available six weeks too late.
Like I said, our mayor saw the finish line in the distance, and thought he'd won the race without getting there.
Might be some hard months ahead for our island.