 Welcome back to Think Tech. I'm Jay Fiedel. This is Community Matters. Our beaches were empty. Our hospital's full. It's a book. It's a compendium, if you will, of commentaries about the pandemic in Honolulu. There's the cover of it. I'm going to talk to the guy who put it together, Mayor Kirk Caldwell. Mayor, welcome to the show. Thank you, Jay. It's been a long time, I think, since pre-pandemic and kind of missed being on your show. It's always fun to engage with you both from an intellectual standpoint, but also from a humorous point of view, too. So it's really good to be back on your show. Thank you for making it available to me and to your listening and viewing public. You know, it's possible that somebody out there doesn't know who you are. I know that's a long shot, but I want to just do some touch points, okay? Waipahu, Waipahu, Tufts for undergraduate, UH for law school. Wow. I'm practiced with Ashford Riston for a while. Ran for the State House. Succeeded Brian Schatz, you remember him. Became the, my majority whip as a Democrat, member of the Democratic Party and so forth. Acting mayor of the city. Ran for mayor. Became the mayor a couple of terms, okay? Then in 2022 was it 2022? You became the author of this book. Correct. Along Jay, I like to correct it's just not me as the author. Also, Georgette Takushi Deemer, who is our Deputy Managing Director when I was mayor, but also when I was majority leader at the State House, she was the House Communications Director, where I first got to meet her. And we co-authored the book together. She's a great disciplinarian, made sure that I stayed on task, that we did interviews. She transcribed all the interviews and then we together co-wrote it. Well, yeah. And I tell you, there's not many people could have put this book together the way you guys did, because you touched so many people. You must have a Rolodex as long as your arm. It's fabulous. You connected with everybody you ever knew that I ever heard of. In fact, a lot of people I never heard of. And they were all there in this book. So it's like, you know, it's classic in the sense that you are touching all people all across the spectrum. And that's really something. And the subject, of course, was all about the pandemic. And you were mayor in 2020, 2021, while it was happening. But let me ask you my first fun question. Okay. The mayor and the city and county do not have a Department of Health, as I recall. So what was your interest in the pandemic if it's a state issue and a federal issue? Boje, you're absolutely right. The city and county of Honolulu, nor the other counties for the state of Hawaii have a Department of Health. Very unusual. Most other cities around our country have a Department of Health to attach to them. And the reason we don't is goes back to the kingdom days where all power was centered in the power of the of the royal leader, both or king or queen. And therefore, Department of Health was with the kingdom. And when it became a republic, Department of Health became part of the republic. And when it became a territory, it stayed with territory. And when it became a state, it stayed with the state. And so our counties don't have a Department of Health. And as the pandemic was approaching, we just had limited resources to rely on. And in fact, I don't know if it's in the book, I can't remember. I think it is. But in February, I actually asked Sarah Park, then the state epidemiologist to come meet with our cabinet about, you know, do we need to worry about this pandemic that seems to be, well, we knew this COVID-19 was, had left Wuhan, had gone to other parts of Asia, and was now in Washington state. And we were concerned about it coming to Oahu. And so we brought her over and she cautioned us to not overreact. Now, my gut was saying to react more quickly and get things going. You know, we asked about wearing masks. It's not really appropriate. How about temperature taking? You know, it doesn't always show that there's a pandemic when you have a higher temperature. Washing your hands is the appropriate action at that time. Now, the state epidemiologist was echoing what the CDC was saying on a national level. And you have to understand that President Trump, the president of that time was poo-hooing this whole pandemic. So I think the health system, government health systems really failed the people of the country and of the state of Hawaii at that time in my mind. But that's all we had to go to. The other interesting thing is, back in January, I actually asked my chief of staff, Gary Korokow and I asked our director of emergency management, give us everything on the Spanish flu of 1918 that involved the city and county of Honolulu. They came back with zero things, except they said, oh, Mary, in 2010, we did a binder of continuing a government if a pandemic strikes in terms of how do we keep the water running? How do we make sure we treat our sewage? How do we make sure our garbage is picked up? But not a thing about how do we protect the people of the city and county of Honolulu. And so there was a page in that book, by the way, that how do you know if you have a pandemic? And it was like 20 questions. And if more than half of them were checked, that meant you had a pandemic. Well, in January, we started checking them and more than half were checked. And we thought, holy moly, we had a pandemic on our heads. That's why you wanted to meet with the state epidemiologists. But things really started to roll. One of the big questions is when you, not necessarily as mayor, but as an ordinary human being person, realize that we were there, that we were in a pandemic. I recall the Pacific Health Communications Conference at Hilton Hawaiian Village every year, January of 2020. There was a letter that went out from the president of the conference, telling everybody at the conference that it appeared there was somebody who came was supposed to have come from Asia who had COVID. And wow, that was January 10th. And I said to myself, we're in for it. Whether there's an actual spread of the conference or not, doesn't matter. We're in for it. They're here. And I suppose it was around the same time with you, your staff, your connection with the state epidemiologist and so forth. You got the message from your sources as individual and as a mayor, that we had a pandemic, right? Yeah, that's right. And my gut was telling me we needed to do more. And that's why I think the city and county of Hone was the first county, island government to take action in terms of his stay at home, work at home order. And that was in mid March. And part of the reason was, you know, by March, my gut was saying we need to do more. And in fact, you know, we'd meet managing director, chief of staff, deputy manager, we talk about more action needs to be taken. We remember we shut down restaurants, except for takeout orders, we collect shut down bars. And then on Saturday, I think was like March 15 or something like that. I got a call from Ray Barra, who's the CEO of Hawaii Pacific Health. He's in your book. Yeah, he's in the book. He said, can we come over and can we call you up? We want Peter Ho, the CEO of Bank of Hawaii, and Micah Connie of the Hawaii Community Foundation. All of them in your book. I also in the book, present information put together by PRM, MIDI ours data collaborative on what happens if you don't take action in the city and county of Honolulu to the hospitals. Because you have a million people on an island of 600 square miles, you're going to see by April, your hospital beds being filled with COVID patients if you don't take action. So I asked them to send over the information. I got it. I looked at it. It was alarming. I then called them up on the phone and talked to them for about an hour and a half. That was on Saturday morning. And then I called Governor E. Gay and said, Can we come over and meet with you? He said, Okay, come over in the afternoon around two o'clock. So I showed up with a couple of our guys are managing director, our chief of staff, and the charts that were presented and put together by the data collaborative. It's been about two hours with the governor and Bruce Anderson, maybe a couple others talking about taking action. And I brought over a draft of a stay at home, work at home order that we basically lifted from the city of San Francisco, the mayor of that time, still the mayor today, London Breed, an African American woman, I think a very good mayor, her Department of Health director for the city told her, you need to take action. Is she shut down the city? She was the first government entity in the country to shut down a geographic area and ask what can the mayor do? You know, health is generally, we talked about this health is generally a state function or maybe a federal function. But it's not necessarily a city function. So I guess you had to ask yourself somewhere along the line here between January and March. What can I do? What kind of orders can I issue? What what can I say to the press and so forth? How was that process for you? It was an evolving process. It was one where there is very little information out there on what to do. As you remember, COVID-19 in the early months of 2020, there was no vaccine and no vaccine on the horizon. They really was Donald Trump was Donald Trump. And he was confusing everybody. Everybody was getting confused by the federal government by the executive branch led by Donald Trump. And so there are no reliable sources to really turn to. But I knew that if we didn't take action, something would happen. So when we sat down with the governor, the argument was basically you're you're a state home working home order has so many pucas in it, you know, essential businesses, you got to keep supermarkets open, people need to eat. And there are other pucas. And as they said, it's not going to be effective. And our feeling was some action as much as we can take would slow the spread of the virus until such time as a vaccine came on and got distributed and there was less chance of people ending up in the hospital, being less sick and dying. And in the day after a couple hours of meeting with the governor, the governor said, you know, I don't think we're ready to go statewide on the shutdown. And I told him, okay, well, we're gonna announce tomorrow, Sunday, that we're going to be shutting down the city and county of Honolulu at 430 on Monday. And we did so we had a press conference on Sunday, and we shut down the island of Oahu on Monday. And Jay, it was amazing how people complied. As you probably recall, by Tuesday, there are no cars on the road. People are were at home. People complied with the order. And it's an amazing testament to the people of this island. That's also a testament to your leadership. I mean, in a crisis like that, you know, you have to step out and do something. Yeah, and you know, this I mean, I guess it was collaborative, but it sounds to me like, it was more like you thinking your action didn't matter what anybody else did. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's true. You know, in times of crisis, you need to you need to make decisions. And, you know, you stand by the decision you make. And I do believe, by the way that the shutdown order was the right thing to do at that time. As you know, you interviewed Dr. Dworkin, Jonathan Dworkin and he an amazing guy who is on our we later in the pandemic, we created a medical panel because we didn't have a Department of Health that advised us we met at least once a week, if not time every day in the early days about what do we do next looking at different decisions that need to be made. And he has shown me statistics that show that this early action kept the disease from spreading as quickly and bought time to get a vaccine developed and rolled out. And he shows statistics for the city of New York. He said you had a mayor and Bill de Blasio and you had a governor in Cuomo who were fighting with each other about who had control over the decision making in the pandemic for the New York City and they delayed well beyond Honolulu's actions. As you know, New York City, unfortunately, became ground central for the pandemic in our country, kind of like Bergamo, Italy, where you had people dying in, you know, hallways of hospitals where you had refrigeration containers outside storing bodies. And he wrote he wrote about that in his book, Play Doctors, which we reviewed with him a week or two ago is Bergamo is a really interesting example of the worst case analysis. Yeah. So I was very impressed at the city, at least in those times, March, March of 2020, was responding that way. And people are going to, you know, go along for that because they were afraid they were they read all the stories about other places and, yeah, and especially the state of Washington with the senior facilities there, everybody dying going into hospitals, not enough ventilators, it was all beginning to unfold in a really bad way. Yeah. So I mean, as I said before, it was leadership is stepping out. And it was taking affirmative action. And I must say that, you know, in general, I'm not sure you can agree or disagree. I'm not sure that the state moved fast enough. I'm not sure that the state took this seriously enough. And I'm happy that you did. What is your opinion, by the way, as to the collective, you know, the collective of government in Hawaii, between say, the spring of 2020, and I guess when when the vaccines came in the end of 2021. Well, Jay, I think it is in the book at the end of conclusion, we have recommendations of what how can we do better, and what should be done when there's another pandemic. And I believe with our warming climate, I mean, you look at that, just the news in the past couple days that you're aware of, I mean, from fires and started in Italy and Greece, to the the ocean in the Florida Keys being warmer than a hot tub to China having massive flooding to the fires in Canada. We are we are seeing extraordinary things happening on our planet. And I believe the warming of the climate is going to create more opportunities for pandemics in the future, which is why I wrote this book partly was a tell the story. And part of it was to provide a framework for the next time a pandemic hits, they can go back and look at it and see what did the state do right? What did the state do wrong? And to answer your question about the state approach, our conclusion is that a Department of Health, whether it be the State of Hawaii, or California, or Massachusetts or Florida, they are not equipped to respond to a pandemic, which is in a an emergency, it's like a hurricane, or an earthquake or a tsunami. These these responses have to be immediate and quick. And emergency management departments, whether it be Haima in the state of Hawaii, or the city and counties, Department of Emergency Management, they're trained to take action quickly and to implement provisions. And in this case, we relied on Department of Health, who has no experience and return responding to a fast moving emergency. And the pandemic was like a hurricane approaching our shores. Yet they were looking for more information. They were delaying action. And they didn't have the the people power to implement things and get things done. And so relying on the Department of Health, I think in the long term, is not the way to go. I think for the state they relied too long on the Department of Health. They finally turned it over to Haima. And you had the general of the National Guard taking more action as he should have. And I think they got better as time went on. And I think it really changed when you had Libby Char, who was a city employee, who was with the Honolulu Fire Department, who deals with emergency responses, and was much more nimble and much more willing to make decisions quickly, to start addressing the problems. And you realize you remember, there's a real debate between the city and the state on contact tracing, right? We felt there weren't enough contact tracers. The Department of Health said, we have we have an army. Well, it turned out there was not an army. And when Libby got over there, we worked with there and we used our CARES money to hire basically polling firms and marketing firms that are trained to make calls and ask questions to be our contact tracers. And the city paid for them, for the state to do it, because we thought it needed to be done quickly. And we thought the approach was a good one because these polling firms, they hire people as the need comes. If you don't need as many tracers, you don't need them. If you need them, they just call them, they've all been trained. So I was Jonathan Dworkin talked about that when we interviewed him. He talked about how successful Korea had been in dealing with transmission. Transmission is the first order of business. And that means contact tracing, which we didn't really get started early enough. Korea did a really good job on that. But if you had to take a lesson, one of the many lessons out of his book as epidemiologist, a virologist, you would say we'd have to focus, as you have said, on contact tracing right away to stop transmission. And you don't have to get very technical about it to kind of find out what, you know, where it went from one person to one person, really important. So I'm going to ask you a strategic response, by the way, Jay. So much more strategic response. I was going to mention, we have a sister city relationship with the city of Incheon, South Korea, where their international airport is. And I called the mayor of Incheon, city of 3 million people. They had much fewer cases than the city and county of Honolulu. And what he told me is number one, mayor, in a pandemic, there's no such thing as overreacting. Overreacting is the response of the day. And we responded quickly. We tested, we traced, and we isolated. We put people who couldn't isolate in their own homes into hotels where they could be taken care of and delay the spread. And Incheon stayed open. They didn't close down the city. But they were very strategic in testing, tracing, and isolating. Yeah. Yeah, that's the secret, isn't it? And, you know, I mean, implicit in all this conversation is that it will happen again. It won't be the same microbe, not the same virus, not even the same characteristics. But it will happen again. These things pop up from time to time as they have through, you know, through through our civilization going way back. I want to ask you a completely unfair question. You know, you have 300 pages of dialogue, of colloquy. And, you know, including you, you know, you had a lot of things to say and you're all through the book. So I wanted to ask you if you would take a moment and just summarize that for me. Summarize what I say throughout the book? Or when everybody says, I mean, you covered the whole landscape with all the people. This is the group of people that operates the city and the large extent, the state. I mean, it's everybody. I like to meet them all. You would have a party. You ought to have a party and call them all down so they can talk to each other. Fantastic experience. But anyway, assuming they were all there at a party, and they were all chit chatting around the room about what happened, would you mind, Kurt, if you could just summarize it all for me? Well, I will summarize it for you, Jay. And if they were all together, and there's a good idea, maybe I should invite them up to our house. There's a there's 25 of them we can sit around and, you know, have, stand up and eat and talk story. And that would be a nice thing to do because we haven't been together since a pandemic. But there's a couple points. Number one, what I think comes through the book and what I learned is the unbelievable perseverance, sacrifice, the coming together for the good of the community, not only these 25 leaders, but the people whose decisions they made that were impacted by those decisions, you know, we, unlike many other parts of our country, where there was consonants and dissonance and disagreement, we had people coming together at all levels of our community for the greater good. I mean, we call it Ohana. And I think that really existed and was shown because without compliance, the orders wouldn't have worked. And we have seen the disease spread. But people sacrificed and did what they were asked of, even if they destroyed their businesses, even if it interrupted their graduations, marriages, funerals, everything else in between their sacrifice, perseverance, and sense of community is one thing that comes loud and clear through this book in all the chapters. The other one is these 25 leaders that I interviewed people who actually had to make the decision and stand behind it good or bad, not the second in command, but the person at the very top of the pyramid. And the thing that comes through is every one of these guys had to make decisions in real time with very little information, whether you're a Peter Howard bank flyer, Bob Harrison at first wine bank, whether you were Ray Bar at Hawaii Pacific Health, or whether you were Ron Mizutani at the food bank, or everyone else in between zippies, you know, Jason Hega, you had to decide how you were going to approach this pandemic and with very little information. And I think real leadership was shown. But I also saw a lot of flexibility where people realized, okay, I'm going to make the decision. If it's not working, we'll adjust and make another one. And I think one of the most interesting stories is the one by Peter Ingram, the CEO of wine airlines, as you will read in this book, through several chapters, is trying to stay ahead of the pandemic as people stop flying on his flights from like Hokkaido, Japan and from from Incheon, South Korea. And you know, they're trying to adjust their flight schedule. And before you know it, no one's flying from Asia to Hawaii. And then he starts to see it happening from the East Coast, and then the West Coast. And how do you get planes back? How do you get your pilots and flight attendants and everyone back into the state of Hawaii is a fascinating story that he had no training for really. And you know, was doing what he thought was best. He did work with other airlines have a Airlines Association. But the end of the day, the buck stopped with him, he had to borrow a lot of money because they were bleeding money every single day. But he held his head high. He did things to keep his airline afloat. And the end of the day, it became the highway between all the islands. You think in the early days of the pandemic, when every island was shut down, the only way cargo got back and forth besides young brothers was through Hawaiian in the belly of the plane. And they said they made more money flying cargo than they did passengers. Very few people were flying. I think they had one flight a day from LA, one flight a day from San Francisco, bring in and needed supplies. And you know, up in the seats, you had two or three people flying that were getting exceptions to fly. So you know, this is an example of leadership at the highest level. And it was exemplified in all 25 of the leaders that I interviewed. You know, it may not have been completely obvious at the time, at the time we were all thinking, well, this is going to, you know, revert like a boomerang right back to normalcy one of these days, we just wait around long enough and we'll be back to the way life was before. But of course, we found out, you know, since that it doesn't work that way. And and that COVID had a really profound effect on our society and here and everywhere. And it changed it changed everything. And you know, you look down Bishop Street, you can you can feel it see it right now today. That's different. The building's office building is largely empty. And that's so in other cities. Businesses have changed the way they work, the way their employees come to work or not. They're, you know, their bottom lines have changed. They've been a sort of an accelerated evolution, if you will, in the economy of the city and the state. And I wonder if you if you've got comments from your various commentators about the permanent changes that have come out of this. Well, that's an interesting question. The thing is, when we started doing the interviews, we're still in the pandemic. Now we thought, man, by the time we finish the book, the pandemic's going to be over. As it turns out, we you know, we may not have a pandemic, but we still have COVID-19. And I know people who even in the office building that I'm in, I have gotten COVID in the past couple weeks. And you know, even though they're fully vaccinated and boosted, they are sick for six or seven days. So we're still not out of it. At the time we interviewed the the 25 leaders, we were still in the pandemic. It was the tier system was still in place. It was starting to come down. Mayor Blanchardi was starting to change it and open up a little bit more. So we didn't I didn't ask too many questions about permanent changes, although several people, including very interestingly, the publisher of the star advertiser, Dennis Francis, who prior to the pandemic was not in favor of telecommuting. He wanted all his reporters out on the street and coming back to the newsroom and writing their stories. And in the book he confesses, and you know, Dennis is a funny guy, tell me, I may not always be right, but I'm never wrong. And he said, you know, I am, I, you know, I, it works. And and to this day, the journalists do not have to come into the newsroom every day. And he says they get, you get the same stories, if not better stories by journalists who can cover their beat, be at home, take care of their kids to take care of their parents, whatever it is, and get their stories out and get the research and writing done. So he did mention that. And a couple others, some of the CEOs of the bank said that, while they want people back, maybe it would not be 100% back and they could have adjusted schedules. And I, so I think, as you say, we're seeing a real change in how people live in cities, you know, office buildings are much more empty than they used to be. And some of them are converted, like the Theo H. Davies building is going to become a condominium. And as you know, the old first wine bank building, the one that they built before they built their new one where the bankruptcy court is now that's the Douglas Emmett has converted it to affordable to rentals. It's a great project. And there's a couple others that are being looked to convert to housing, which I think is great for the city to have more residents in downtown Homolulu, not having to commute as much using less energy, being closer together is all good in terms of fighting our climate crisis. So yeah, there's permanent changes we're seeing that have been brought about this about this pandemic. But if you read the book, you're not going to see you'll see some, but not a lot of focus on that. If I went back to them today, I think you see them talking about significant permanent changes that are being brought about by the pandemic. Well, that that would be my suggestion that you already have your team in place. These people, you know, they are in great positions to observe how how things work. And you are to your your career, you know, enables you to understand the dynamic of the city that the essential character of the city and the state. And so you could do a sequel on this, Kurt. You could do a sequel. You know, how did it change us? You know, way to Euro two. And I think there's a real possibility there be very interested in seeing that. The other thing I was going to ask you is that, you know, we need roadmaps. And I'm I'm dismayed that we didn't have anything from the Spanish flu of 1918 and 19. So we need we need to write it up. We need to write it up like you did and like to work and did so that the next time it happens. And so I have this vision, forgive me for expressing a vision. I but I do have these vision problems. So here it is five years, maybe 10 years hence from now. And we have another pathogen and it's going around the world even faster. You know, as a as a pandemic, and somebody says, Oh, we got to develop a way to deal with this. We have to develop an approach. Quickly, let's get Kurt Paul Wells book off the shelf. It's called Our Beaches Were Empty, Our Hospitals Full. We have to read that in detail to develop a roadmap for the next iteration of this kind of virus. What do you think? I like that idea. And in fact, the last chapter of the book provides the roadmap. What we did is we actually took a bunch of suggestions from a group of physicians and healthcare practitioners, including Jonathan was a part of it, and they had recommendations on what to do with the next pandemic. And many of them were ones that we agreed to, we agreed with, and that the leaders that interviewed also thought worked. And so the last chapter is a kind of a combination of what they thought and what we thought. And it's a roadmap and it's for that very reason, Jay. I mean, without joking about it, it's that people turn to this. And of course, you know, a stay-at-home, work-at-home order is part of it. More strategic this time than the last one until a vaccine is developed. And I believe with the RNA research, you know, the technology today, they'll develop vaccines more quickly. But until it does, you need to slow the spread. Then you roll out the vaccine. But what are the other things you do? You do put up a barrier to coming in to Hawaii. You know, you got a great moat around the Hawaiian islands. And you do testing, tracing, and isolation. You make sure you have stockpiles of PPE. You make sure you have enough oxygen. You make sure you have enough of the antiviral treatments that you need when people get sick. You need to make sure that the Department of Health is not the decision-makers that Hainima leads the response for the state of Hawaii along with the emergency management departments of each of the counties. You need to make sure. And here's a real tragedy that the schools are involved in the decision making the superintendent of education. When you think about the impact that we had on on the kids of Hawaii and their loss of learning, particularly in the public school system that did a hero's response with very little support from anyone else. That was a real tragedy is amazing. The private schools did a better job just because they're more well funded in some ways. And they have the ability to move a little bit more quickly. And you have a parent student population that's willing to comply with the requests being made. But having them at the table and making decisions together. And I think we can get through the next pandemic a lot better than the last one. This one we proved. Look at today. I mean, well, maybe not once back in the office. We go about our lives. People are traveling. Waikiki is built. We celebrate life together. So it's not to the end of the world. It's just that we need to buy the time while we develop a vaccine and get it rolled out. And this roadmap provides that exact course of action for future pandemics. Well put, I would say, and strikes me that, you know, there are very few people who could have organized and written this book the way you have, you know, you, your local guy, you're a lawyer practicing. That's different when you practice practicing, you know, legislator. That's really important. And, and a mayor close to, you know, where the city works, the policy points, how you control things, how you get the message out. All of these things prepared you to write this book. So, you know, it's really quite something. You've got to be the perfect guy for this book. So my question is, how, how has this book changed Kurt Caldwell? Does he now recognize that in this, this, this career biography you have, that there's a writer. It's someone who tackles these difficult public policy issues in writing to the public. What do you think? Have you changed? I don't know if I've changed. I have to say it was a sense of satisfaction that George Ed and I wrote this book that we actually not only thought about it, not only due to the interviews, but we actually wrote it and got it published. And, you know, people will call and say, I went to Barnes & Noble. They're out of the book. I went to Native find books and things and they're out of it. So, you know, people are buying the book and that's reaffirming. Now the proceeds from the book, in fact, go to the Johnny Burns School of Medicine. So the School of Medicine can help us with the next pandemic. And, you know, we're doing a book signing at Barnes & Noble this coming Saturday at one o'clock at the Alamona Barnes & Noble. And for every book purchased, they're going to make a donation to the medical school. So that's great. I have to say I feel good supporting this medical school, you know, that's just educated. So many local kids have gone on into the medical profession, didn't have to leave the state. So that's a very, so how's it changing me? That's reinforcing that we could do a book that we're doing good in terms of the sales proceeds. The other thing is, for me, it was more in interviewing these folks and hearing their stories about how their decisions impacted their employees and how their decisions impact impacted the general public, it just made me feel how lucky I am to have been born and raised in Hawaii, how lucky I was to be, you know, the elected official in the state house from Manawa and the majority leader and a mayor, that we live in an exceptional place. Jay, you and I and everyone else who's watching this, we're lucky. And we need to treat it as a special place and it starts with the actions that we have towards each other on all kinds of different issues. So maybe that changed me, you know, it made me more reflective, more in love with this place. And, and, you know, in humanity that in the worst of times, we don't get bad or react in a bad way that we actually can step up and come together for the greater good. And that gives me a lot of hope and wants me to do more in our community. And I don't know exactly how, but you know, it just says, I want to continue working in this community. And I want to continue to make sure that we're the best we can be. And that, you know, we're an extraordinary group of people as it is. So that's Kurt Corwell. He's not just good looking and very articulate and smart. He's also an altruist. And maybe this is big opportunity to go full tilt into altruism. Please consider that going forward. Will you, Kurt? Okay, I will. Thank you for that reinforcement, Jay. Kurt Corwell, former mayor of the City and County of Honolulu, joining us today to talk about his book, which is going to be signed this weekend. Our beaches were empty. Our hospitals full of very important contribution to the literature around the development and the struggles and the challenges and successes of our city and our culture. Thank you so much, Kurt. Thank you, Jay. Really appreciate it. And keep going forward on Think Tech. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much for watching Think Tech Hawaii. If you like what we do, please click the like and subscribe button on YouTube. You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn. Check out our website, thinktechhawaii.com. Mahalo.