COVID Testing - Aloha

 

Just back from a two week trip to Hawaii and feel compelled to recount the challenges of traveling in Hawaii with what may be the most onerous restrictions anywhere in the USA.  In general, Hawaii has lagged the rest of the country when it comes to reopening and when we arrived they were still requiring masks and social distancing inside and outside.  So, if you wanted to relax poolside in a lounge chair you were supposed to wear a mask.  Thankfully, as a practical matter, the hotel staff did not seem interested in enforcing the mandate, if only because the hordes of tourists chose to ignore the mask mandate when outdoors.  A shortage of service staff, social distancing and indoor dining restrictions made for long lines for most anything, food, drinks, sundries etc.  This put a strain on the staff that had returned to work, and we found the famed Aloha spirit rarely exhibited.  Hawaii requires all mainland visitors to register online with a government site, that tracks health status and health records, including COVID testing.  As a rule, Hawaii requires a negative COVID test within 72 hours of arrival or they supposedly impose a ten-day quarantine.  Hawaii does not accept rapid COVID testing and requires lab-based testing from its “Trusted Providers” who advertise that their results will be available in 48-72 hours after the nasal swab, which makes for a problematic timeline, not sure if your result will arrive before you do in Hawaii.  Our flight departed on Wednesday, so after a little research we headed on Sunday morning to a Dulles Airport test facility.  After suffering an unusually painful nasal jab, the clinic could not guarantee that our results would arrive in time given the fact that the test facility used UPS which does not operate on Sundays.  Having paid for the test out of pocket this was not good news. The results did arrive on time, and when we embarked our flight from Chicago to Honolulu, we were able to wait in a special line for Hawaii travelers so a gate attendant could check our “Hawaii Safe Travels” app and confirm a negative COVID test and receive a wrist band that indicated as much. We then waited to board. Upon arrival in Honolulu even with the wrist band we were ushered around the airport to stand in line with the rest of the debarked passengers so that a Hawaii health official could verify that we had the required test and were COVID negative. After a long, tiring and all-night flight the line did not move fast enough for anybody. 

        Having arrived on Oahu we now needed to determine how to get a COVID test before going to Maui. The concierge at the Hilton was helpful, and we were tested in a temporary clinic on the ground floor of a nearby Waikiki hotel.  Again, we waited nervously for the results to show up before the flight to Maui.  However, this time the results were available in less than 48 hours so we could upload them to the Hawaii Safe Travels website.  One recurring problem with the web site was that although it acknowledged the test results, there was an indication that the results were not acceptable.  This was in fact not the case, and in the end the necessary QR code was sent via email for us to show the local health authorities at the airport.  The line at the Maui airport included passengers from more than our flight, so it took over an hour to clear the health check. We were only in Maui for four nights, so we had to act quickly to comply with the requirement for a COVID test within 72 hours of our trip to the Big Island.  This was indeed problematic, because the lab work is not done on Maui, but must be sent back to Honolulu for analysis, thus creating a delay in the process.  We were perplexed when one of us got our results and the other did not. After spending most of the morning on the phone with the test facility and the lab, it turns out that the nurse had transposed a first and last name despite reading the information directly from a driver’s license. As a contingency for the test not being completed in time to fly to the Big Island, we made reservations on Hawaiian Air for the next day and extended our stay by one night at the Hyatt Regency which due to the high demand was now charging pre-pandemic room rates.  The challenges with first and last name were resolved, and we were able to leave as planned.  We did not have to pay for an extra night at the Hyatt, but according to a Hawaiian Air ground person, the airline does not refund cancellations despite purchasing insurance from the airline for that reason.  

        Arriving on the Big Island we were once again ushered into a long line so that we could show the QR code on our iPhone to a health official.  This line moved quicker than the one on Maui due to more health officials assigned to check the arriving passengers.  Unfortunately, there was a long line at the Hertz rental facility. On Maui the Hertz Gold protocols permitted us to walk to an aisle and select a car of our choice, but on the Big Island renters must wait in line before the agent confirms your reservation and orders a car to be brought from the parking area to the front of the Hertz building. Although the shortage of rental vehicles had received a lot of attention in the media, this did not seem to be the reason for the delay at the Hertz counter because the parking lot was full of vehicles.  Arriving at the Hilton Waikoloa, we once again had to line up to show the latest QR code on our phones. This time we were rewarded with a white wrist band that permitted us to roam the hotel, and let the staff know at a glance that we had been tested COVID free.

        Bottom line is that the costs for testing added up to almost $1,000 and we do have a $250 credit with Hawaiian Air that we can use in the next year – if we return. Hawaii will relax some of its COVID restrictions on June 15. 

 

 

Early Racial Tolerance

     Alexandria residents benefit from being surrounded by history, like the life and times of its most famous resident, George Washington.  When in 1775 George Washington was appointed by the Continental Congress to take command of the fledgling military forces, a young lady in Providence felt compelled to compose a patriotic poem and send it to him at his headquarters in Cambridge across the Charles River from Boston which at that time was occupied by the British. The 43 line poem, “His Excellency George Washington” was well received by George Washington not only because of its glowing tribute and encouragement, but because the poem acknowledged the imminent struggle for freedom and independence.
Celestial choir! enthron’d in realms of light,
Columbia’s scenes of glorious toils I write.
While freedom’s cause her anxious breast alarms,
She flashes dreadful in refulgent arms.
The poem went on to sagaciously and sanguinely predict victory over the British:
Anon Britannia droops the pensive head,
While round increase the rising hills of dead.
Ah! cruel blindness to Columbia’s state!
Lament thy thirst of boundless power too late.    
     Shortly after receiving the poem George Washington wrote the young lady expressing his appreciation and extending an invitation to meet with her which he did in March of 1776.  What makes all this more remarkable was that the shining light was Phillis Wheatley an African slave who had been purchased by the Wheatley family of Boston. She had come from West Africa (probably Senegal) when she was just eight years old. The Wheatley’s encouraged their own daughter to tutor the slave girl in Greek, Latin and other subjects to the point that Phillis Wheatley was regarded as a prodigy. When she was only twelve years old she started to write poetry and in 1773 she published a book of poetry which made her a world celebrity. That year Phillis Wheatley made a literary tour to England and upon her return to Boston her master opted to manumit her.  She drew the favorable attention of America's founding fathers, including George Washington, who told her that "the style and manner [of your poetry] exhibit a striking proof of your great poetical talents."  She is recognized as the first African-American woman to publish a book and she is a cornerstone in African American literary heritage. Among other honors, the Phillis Wheatley YWCA in Washington, D.C. is named for her.
     The meeting between George Washington and Phillis Wheatley has been regarded as an early instance of racial tolerance and may have contributed to George Washington’s evolving attitude towards slavery. In 1776 he reversed an earlier decision and permitted the enlistment of black soldiers with eventually about 9000 slaves joining the patriots. George Washington in his last will and testament famously freed the slaves he owned making provisions for their education and training. Indeed Phillis Wheatley’s influence on George Washington may have been more momentous than she could have ever suspicioned.

Reflections on Gun Control

Gun control is yet another of this country’s divisive topics and therefore another opportunity where the facts become an irritation.  Just like war, most people do not support anything that could kill or cause injury to them or their family, but the inconvenient truth is that no matter how many laws are in place with the intention of reducing gun violence, criminals by definition will disregard these laws. Indeed, some of the cities with the harshest gun laws also have the highest rates of gun violence.  According to the Center for Disease Control about 5.2 out of every 100,000 Americans are homicide victims, not especially high by global standards, but there is no highly industrialized country with a homicide rate comparable to Black Americans whose rate of 19.4 per 100,000 persons, is about 12 times higher than the average rate in other developed countries. The NAACP reported that the leading cause of death among African-American teens ages 15 to 19 was gun related homicide accounting for 45 percent of all child and teen gun deaths while only 15 percent of the total teen population. The typical murder is committed with a handgun where both the perpetrator and the victim are young Black men.  Blacks are six times as likely as whites to be the victim of homicide and are seven times as likely to commit a homicide. Somehow these black lives don’t matter. Why? Black on black crime as a construct is viewed by many as racist because of the injustice of treating blacks as criminally suspect due to the actions of a small minority, but if this country wants to seriously address gun violence it needs acknowledge the causes of black on black crime and do something about it. For starters, seventy percent of black children are born out of wedlock, and roughly 60 percent live in homes without fathers.  This sad reality should motivate state and federal governments as well as local communities- especially churches and other religious organizations- to encourage blacks to get and stay married and implement processes and procedures that restore families. Children from households where a mother and father are present are less likely to engage in violent behavior, including gangs. The overwhelming majority of gun homicides in Chicago are gang related. A number of social pathologies have been attributed to those who come from fatherless homes, including juvenile delinquency, youths in prison, youth drug use, high school dropouts, behavioral issues, and trouble dealing with authority.  Thought leaders and Black community organizers need to shift their current focus on police departments to establishing alternatives that diminish the attractiveness of gangs, like job training programs that include a stipend. In an environment where the avowed policy of the Justice Department is to reduce the number of young Blacks incarcerated, an exception should be made for gun violence where law breaking should result in stiffer sentences.

Clinton Emails

With regard to emails on her server that were are the highest level of classification, in a recent NPR interview, Hillary Clinton stated: “Well, first, let me say that this is the continuation of an interagency dispute that has been going on now for some months. As the State Department has confirmed, I never sent or received any material marked classified, and that hasn’t changed in all of these months.” Like many Clinton statements, parsing is required. Clinton’s attitude is the result of a long standing systemic distrust between DOS and DOD characterized not by cooperation, but by competition due to a number of factors not to mention that the DOS budget is a fraction of the DOD budget. If you are at DOS you consider yourself the incarnation of "soft power" while on the other hand, DOD is clearly the instrument of war. These cultural differences are made dramatically manifest due to this latest Clinton scandal where DOD security classifications were viewed by DOS as being intrinsically DOD/Intel, and revocable by DOS. By the way, this interagency dysfunction brings the unfortunate Benghazi incident into a clearer perspective. 

Could critics of personality tests have their own agenda?

The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) test is based on the theories of Carl Jung, in which the test-taker reveals himself to fit four dichotomies: introverted or extroverted, intuitive or sensing, judging or perceiving, and thinking or feeling and classifies respondents by the initials of the predominate dichotomies. Notwithstanding vocal critics, MBTI is the most widely used and trusted personality assessment tool which reinforces its validity, albeit non-scientifically. The reality is that MBTI is a user friendly tool providing insight into the human complexity by classifying respondents into easily digestible categories. Arguably, some of the recent criticism comes from zealots of political correctness and anti-profiling who regard any categorization of the human personality as an example of prejudice.

Don't drink the water in Naples

Living in Italy made for awareness about the callous and reckless dumping of toxic waste in the Naples environs, but it is only from time to time does this crisis come to the attention of a wider population. Last Sunday's WaPo did report that the Italian government confirmed higher-than-normal incidents of death and cancer among residents in and around Naples, thanks to decades of toxic waste dumping by a particularly treacherous element of the Mafia, the local Camorra.  The rates of babies in the provinces of Naples and Caserta hospitalized in the first year of life for tumors, especially brain tumors, was determined to be excessive.  The government blamed the excessive health issues to contaminants found at illegal hazardous waste dump sites which include high levels of lead, arsenic and assorted industrial solvents. In general, these dumps are the result of the Camorra's disposing of toxic waste from Italy's industrialized North for a fraction of the cost of legal disposal. In Italy where wire tapping is commonplace, a local mob boss was overheard when asked what he suggested doing about the toxic aquifers, "Drink bottled water!"

American Unexceptionalism

In an earlier post, I wrote about how it has become a norm to confuse fact with opinion which is an obvious and unfortunate testament to the country's disintegrating morals. Another contributory factor to this confusion is a pervasive anti-intellectualism which has resulted in the younger generation being less informed, despite a wealth of knowledge at their fingertips. After all, it makes it easier to confuse facts and opinions, if you don't really know what are the facts. The younger generation sees the internet not as a learning tool, but as a social networking tool with a focus on themselves and their friends. Mark Bauerlein, in his book, The Dumbest Generation, revealed how a whole generation of self-absorbed youth has become less informed and less literate than preceding generations. Coupling ignorance with a doddering moral compass does not make for a shining city on the hill.