 This is Winston Welton, I am your host today for CoronaWatch. The date is Wednesday, April 22, 2020, and I am joined by Cynthia Sinclair and Stephanie Dalton. Welcome, ladies. Aloha. Good bye. So, lots happened in the last week since we last met, and it's hard to keep up with so many things going on, but I think probably one of the biggest things that's now sort of the problem is that we're talking about the liberation of states that Donald Trump has called for. What is this liberation? Is it real? Are the rest of us who don't want to be liberated yet being duped by the mainstream media? Is that what's going on, or are the other folks kind of being duped? What do you think? Let's start with you, Cynthia. Well, I think it's a very political divide that's happening here. It seems that Republican states tend to want to open up as opposed to Democratic states that don't necessarily want to. You look at responsible people like Andrew Cuomo, who is very adamant about making sure that the testing levels are in place before you open up, and then you have the opposite extreme of an interview that I watched earlier today with the mayor of Las Vegas, who was talking about the importance of putting the many before the one instead of the one before the many. She wants to put the many before the one, and she thinks it's more important for people to get back to work than it is for them to save lives. Is that a valid argument? I mean, just playing the devil's advocate, are these people in their right mind? Is this whole coronavirus thing overblown? Are we not dealing with a full deck here? Well, I don't believe that it is that we're not dealing with a full deck. I believe that people are desperate, and I understand that. And Anderson Cooper was doing that interview this morning, and he was trying to give her every out to explain why she thinks it's important, and it's okay. And still, without her actually being able to articulate that she wants to put the many before the one, that's basically what she was saying, and that was her only argument. And when he tried to ask her about testing, do you want to put testing in place? Have you talked to the mayor of Los Angeles, who's trying to make sure when he opens up, he's got all the testing in place, and she didn't even want to hear anything about it. She said, well, yes, I talked to him, but no, I'm not talking to him about that. And it seems like some people are staying sort of in an information bubble that doesn't really include the science. And I think it's important for people to include the science. We see Georgia saying they're going to open up tomorrow. We've had other states that are trying to open up, even though they don't meet the federal guidelines of a 14-day downward trend of cases and deaths. And these people are not even listening to that. So how do we figure this out? I don't know. Oh, it's a big question, because I want to keep an open mind and think, okay, am I being sold a bill of goods, but it seems to me that people are still getting infected. Our death rate goes up by thousands daily in this country. There's no place to put the dead in Italy. It's getting better there. I mean, they may have hit a peak in Ecuador. They're leaving bodies on the street. Is this all just overreaction for us being put into quarantine in here in Oahu? We've gone, the mayor says, May 31 is our new deadline to get out of quarantine. We got Georgia opening up tomorrow. Other states, I was talking with a friend in Chicago. He said less than 20% of the people at his bank were wearing masks. And none of them were practicing social distancing yesterday, which to us in Hawaii seems like madness. Stephanie, are we mad in Hawaii, or are they mad, or are we just both all of us lost and we just can't find our way because of the confusion from STEMI from the top? That's a good question, Winston. I don't know. I'm totally perplexed. I don't know that these people are watching the same shows I'm seeing of the rooms where people are dying, and that is not a good way to go. And it's a very desperate situation, not one you would choose to get into. My concern is not only for their recklessness in going out now, but that they're not thinking about history. History teaches us some things, and even the people of earlier ages knew to get out of the way of these things. That was their only defense, was to go, leave. People moved. They got out of the way of whatever it was, the sweating sickness or the plague or what have you tried to outrun it, that's all they could do. But what is really perplexing for me is that we all know, and I don't, maybe we're not talking about it enough, but there's asymptomatic virus infection. So there are many people who are not showing any symptoms whatsoever, but are shedding this virus voluminously everywhere they go. So why is that not a bit of a concern to everybody? Just because you're standing by somebody that doesn't have a cold or anything, that's really wild. So that also has to do with the testing issue and why it's so important, because we don't know how many people are infected, because even if we think about it just as county running noses, that's not going to tell us how many are infected. And it's going to turn out to be if, in fact, the Rockefeller Foundation is going to do this, has established a national testing plan, what we're going to find out is what I think a lot of people don't want to know is that the infestation rate is extremely high. Is that something that we actually want? I mean, do we want to have a herd immunity coming about? The other thing that's troubling is why is this the Rockefeller Foundation? Where's the federal government? Where is, how can South Korea be testing on a scale that's so much greater than the United States, you know, the richest, most powerful nation on earth? How is this possible in this day and age? So we have to wait for the Rockefellers to come out with a... Don't you think that that's why they're doing it? Because the federal government is not doing it and has no plans to do it. So somebody needed to step up to do it. It's just like the governors now are forming in these regional associations in order for them to meet their needs that the federal government is not meeting. So I think that now there's response because the people who are conscientious about protection of themselves and their people are taking actions like this to get things done that aren't going to be possible. Fair enough. Cynthia, are you, when you go out, are you, are you wearing a mask as is mandated by our mayor and our governor for your protection and the protection of others? Just going to throw out my bias there. Or are you just saying, you know what, this is just fake news. I'm going without a mask because it's not really a threat and we're being just lied to and bamboozled. This is some sort of socialist takeover of the economy or whatever it is. Are you actually wearing your mask and how is it out on a walk? Who are other people wearing masks for the people that may be beaming in from everywhere? Well, I don't really know the answer to that as far as other people because I don't go out. Literally, I don't go out. I just not too long ago got out of the hospital. I have lupus and Crohn's disease, so I'm extremely compromised. And if I get it, it's very likely that I will die. So I'm one of the, you know, people that, that hope everybody else will wear their masks. And I'd gone out twice since this all started. And yes, I wore a mask even before it was required, even though I knew that wearing a mask does not protect me from other people or from getting the disease. All it does is protect me from shedding the disease to someone else. And even though I haven't been out at all, I still know that I should just even if to be a good, you know, example for other people, I think it's important. So your civic responsibility, even though you may feel that you don't have this and most likely don't since you've been sequestered away, you just say, this is our civic duty to our fellow humans. Right. Exactly. So and does it seem like people here in Oahu and Honolulu are taking this seriously more than say they are in the states that want to be, whether people want to be liberated? Absolutely, I think it's making a difference. Look at our numbers. Our numbers are better than anywhere else. We have these super low numbers. We're not increasing our cases by very much each day. And that's including all of the islands. You know, we only had four new cases the other day. That's very low, all total. We only have what 10 or 12, I think, deaths total for here in Hawaii. That's a big difference than anywhere else in the country. My children live in the South. They live in Alabama. And what a difference it is because I still have a lot of friends there. And I live there for a number of years. And the people there think that this is all just a big joke. They don't wear the masks. They're not going to wear the masks. And they're adamant about saying nobody's going to tell me I have to. And I think, well, then I guess Alabama is going to go through the herd immunity, like you were saying, is that's what's going to happen. Or as soon as these states start opening up like they are planning on doing. Then we are going to see a huge surge, a resurgence of this virus. And we can look at New York as a really good example. And we can look at what Washington did or California did in the very beginning. They closed down immediately and they kept their numbers low. New York didn't close right away. Their numbers, obviously, we know, make up what I think half of the numbers for the whole country are in New York and New Jersey. And those are real people dying. This is not fake news. Those are not fake deaths. You know, that's the thing is that these are real people behind every single statistic. This is someone's mother, sister, brother, father, child, co-worker. We're looking at the CDC came out, I believe, either late yesterday or early today, Stephanie, saying that this winter was going to be worse than it is right now. And I mean, they're obviously using some whatever methods of projection that they have there. We see cases like Taiwan and Singapore. Singapore was being held up as the model, Stephanie, right? That they got the thing right down. But now we're seeing a mass surge. And interestingly enough, they said that the huge majority of the people that are getting in Singapore are not citizens. They're marginalized people who are their guest workers coming from other countries and crowded in dormitories. Do you see parallels with us here in Hawaii that might be a cause or even in this nation about marginalized people, whether the homeless or immigrants or folks without insurance? And do you see this surge coming back here? Well, of course, you know, I don't know anything for sure. And I have no medical degree. But Dr. Bricks said at the yesterday's advisory that there were going to be all of these watches put in place, that there was going to be much observance and watching for signs that things were. She was very, she repeated herself several times saying all of that. But she didn't say how they were going to do that and what was it that they were going to do. And I think, you know, she was implying that she was answering a question about a resurgence and that that was what she was responding to, that everybody was going to be watching out. But with no testing and no real plans to do anything about scheduling the stay at home events and no national policy on that. I don't understand why she could say that. So I was left really perplexed by her because ordinarily she's very informative. But there are a couple of issues here, which are that we don't know about this virus very much. And I think even the medical and the researchers are saying that that we don't know enough yet. We don't know that there's any herd immunity. I don't think that the Black Plague has herd immunity. I mean, you will be wiped out to a man. And the same way with the virus that broke out in New Mexico a couple of years ago. I don't. So so we just don't know anything. And so that's why I'm I'm curious that people are are what have assumptions. They're making assumptions about how this is going to act when it doesn't have any rules that it's letting us know about yet, except that it's a killer. So are they is it just that people are anecdotally looking at evidence in, say, Georgia, Alabama, or, you know, the other states that Donald Trump is. Well, they'd be we can call them, you know, Republican states, but they're filled with human beings that may be led astray by their leaders for whatever reasons, let's just assume that it's positive reasons, although a lot of it seems very political. And when, especially when you have the president telling, which I found very troubling, calling for states to be liberated, liberate, you liberate, you know, people from a dictator, you don't and then combining it with the calls for gun protecting your gun rights. He's fomenting your great unrest and it's very scary to the president to be counting on these things. It's one thing for him to call the governors and say, hey, we're going to sweeten the pod if you do open up or whatever. But this seems like terribly irresponsible. Did that strike you the same way, Cynthia? Or I don't know, are we off base here? I just say the authority thing, which you mentioned with Alabama, you know, people have are adverse to authority, right? Anybody telling them to stay at home. So I was just going to say you'd already kind of dipped into that with your Alabama comments. Well, Alabama sort of just gets the, you know, Alabama, Mississippi. It's they kind of get the they're sort of the benchmark, aren't they, for a lot of different things and you you live there, Cynthia. So you understand, is it an anti-government thing? Is it that they're listening to too much right wing talk radio and TV so that they're not really getting a complete picture from the highfalutin scientists and with the big words? They don't. They don't listen to the scientists. They listen to what Trump says. They are completely victims of the Kool-Aid. I don't know how else to describe it. They are so pro-Trump that they can't admit or even face that he might be wrong about something. They don't want to think that he could ever be wrong. And they it's a very much of a, it reminds me of a cult thing, right? But it's all being backed up by all this misinformation that's being thrown out. And we were talking before the show about the algorithms, you know, that there are our use, our media use tells them everything they need to know about us. So then they can really pinpoint who they need to send what information or what misinformation to. And so I think that has a lot to do with it. I'll tell you, one of the things that struck me this week was when I read about William Barr coming out with his statement saying that he will prosecute governors, make some sort of legal ramifications if they don't follow what Trump says. If they're too strict. Now, he didn't have anything to say about the dangerous, life-risking governors that are opening their states too soon and risking people's lives. That he didn't say anything about that. But for the senators, I mean, the governors that will not open their states and are being too strict, then he's got legal ramifications for them. That's absolutely insane. This is the attorney general of the United States, who is supposed to be upholding the law, where this is obviously that the states are closest to them. They know where the outbreaks are happening. They can make these decisions. I mean, if George is allowed to make its decisions, then should Hawaii not be allowed to make its decisions? It's madness when you have an attorney general doing that. And I don't know how I have missed that story. Maybe I just got a coronavirus and Trump overload. But as we're looking at this and we're seeing that there's going to be a resurgence of cases regardless. And it's going to happen everywhere. And we don't know how it's going to happen or what. We're at 37% unemployment right now. And Chicago is not exactly a bastion of the South. So when my friend told me nobody was wearing masks there, I was seeking, what is with people? And I would like to be proven wrong, but I'm seeing people dying all over the place still and that we seem to be doing something right here in Hawaii. But we do have now we're very tourist economy based. We're going to see second quarter unemployment go very widespread. 30% of people didn't pay their rent on time in April. I guess nation wide from a story that I was reading. I get people that there's impacts of the economy are huge. And people are asking, is it worth it? Or should we, who was it? Glenn Beck saying, oh, he happily sacrificed himself for his children and the economy. I'm not sure that that's so true. I also read we're going to looking at famine, biblical famine is what we're seeing. Stephanie, do you see that the government, if it's opening up and forcing these states to open up and be liberated, is it going to step up to the plate then? And somehow if everything still doesn't work out or you're going to see mass government handouts, are we going to see food being delivered and unemployment checks? Or is that going to be then say, oh, no, states, you need to take care of this? Because I saw today they're going to let the states go bankrupt. Well, that's right. And they didn't include the states in the latest package of helpful money. But my concern is that it is just chaotic. And because of not having a national program of testing or a federal policy of containment or a policy for the nation and how to act under this in all the states, it's just chaotic. And I think that this is exactly the kind of environment that our leaders want to be in. Because when it's chaos, then they have a lot more degrees of freedom to do whatever they want and move around in that chaos. However, if you actually have a database, like what Dr. Bricks and Dr. Fauci and the other scientific people say, if we are going to have a national testing program so that we can get a framework of data that can help guide the decisions and the policies that are going to be put in place, apps and that, it's just chaos. And that's how. And do you see that? Cynthia, do you see any organized framework coming out that makes sense, like Stephanie was saying, or do you think it's going to continue to be chaos for a while? I think the only organized thing that I see coming out is what Andrew Cuomo is doing. And you really see him making specific choices that are completely because of what data he gets that day. Not what some political person outside says or if he, and I would love to have been a fly on the wall for that meeting that he had with the president in DC, was it yesterday, I think? I mean, it both said it was a good meeting. I don't know. I don't see Andrew Cuomo just totally kissing Trump's butt. I think he probably would have said, listen, we need this. We need that. You've got to do this and you've got to do that. And this is what's working. And being on the front lines of the worst outbreak, the biggest hotspot that we have in this country, I think he's the one we really need to listen to because he's tried things that didn't work and tried things that didn't work. And so he's kind of got a better handle on this than anybody in Washington does. And so I think that's important. OK. And do you think the same thing, Stephanie, are you feeling optimistic that chaos will not rain and that maybe the Dr. Bricks is and the Dr. Fauci's and other people with their science, their sciences are going to rescue us? Or is it just going to be more political mayhem that's the whim of the minute? I think we've got a better shot, like New York has, with their leadership. Cuomo has now shown leadership. OK, so there's a model. Here in Hawaii, maybe we're getting some leadership from some of the people that are making good decisions now. Well, we may be in a better place now, but look at what we had to go through. Hilo chased away cruise ships. Literally down on the top, you're not coming in. The airlines were coming in with people. There were no temperature takers at the airport. No people that came in from Washington State at during the height of the crisis. Nothing, no check. So look at what happened to us. We didn't get it all right. In Hawaii, I'm talking about now, we didn't get it all right. But people tend to be more rule followers here. And our family, I mean, we're aloha. We're a family base. We want to be safe here on our island. So there are some values that may be guiding our state. Now we're going to lead the nation then, Stephanie. We have a question from a viewer, a viewer like you, says, how are we going to provide tests to everyone? How can we get masks to everyone? Is that going to be possible? And what would that take? As we know that all the president has to do is use that act that's been used since the second war or Korean War to get the productive factories and industry to make those things happen. He can make those things happen. Is it going to happen? Is it going to happen? Is it going to make it happen or do we need to wait for the governors and the Rockefellers to do it? Well, we may, is Trump going to do it? No, I don't think. Yes. I don't know. Cynthia, what do you think? Is the Trump going to do it? Or is it going to be governors and Rockefellers? Governors and Rockefellers, because I think if he was going to do something, he would have done it already. I think what he is doing, and when I watch some of the reports that are coming out from these really hard hit states and these hard hit cities, and they're talking about how they're doing these basic drug deal type deals to get their masks and their PPE delivered for them. And then they show up to pick it up and the feds show up at the same time. And sometimes they abscond with it. The feds take it. And I think that the comment that Jared Kushner made was very telling me about what they think about the federal stockpile. It's ours. Not ours. It's ours. Maybe they're hoarding them at the White House. So it's a lot of, we're getting a lot of gloom and doom, but at the end of this, this is what we're calling the great reset, a great awakening. We're getting a lot of interesting communicative initiatives out of this. We're seeing companies, organizations, state cities, mayors, governors, interesting people step up to the plate, inventing new things. We don't have much time left, but I'd like to know, what are you seeing that's inspiring you that you've said, wow, this is a great thing. It doesn't have to necessarily be in our state or even country. What are you seeing that's happy? You're waving. It's the picture of Los Angeles with a blue sky. I am a California kid born and raised, and so I know what Los Angeles usually looks like, and it doesn't have a blue sky. So seeing Los Angeles with a blue sky was pretty special to me. Okay, so that's one thing that's come out of it, so maybe we'll have some increased environmental awareness of where we want to go now that the EPA doesn't exist anymore, and California's being sued for its stronger emissions controls, but maybe that will be reversed. So that's one thing. And today's Earth Day, it's good you mentioned that. Stephanie, what do you see that's positive, that's interesting, and that's peaking your happy, happy space? Thank you, thank you, Cynthia, because that is a really good thing, and it's happening in a lot of places, and it's a 5% reduction in emissions. And if it can keep up, that's a silver lining, they're saying of this play, of what's happening to us, and that if they could just build on this and keep going, they might be able to meet the standard for reducing our difficulties with the environment and the climate, so which is a standard of 8% reduction every day, so it's still short of that, but that's a very good one. I take great pleasure, I take great joy in seeing that too. My other one that's good, I think is that our Lieutenant Governor, and our Governor, resolved their consternations with each other, so I think that politically, Hawaii has also produced a miracle, and things got better, and so maybe we can lead the nation, which we had a chance to do from the get-go, just like the US had a chance to do from the get-go, blew that, Hawaii blew its get-go, but now let's see if we can't come out and see. Let's see if we can't get it there, and I think that we have every chance to do that with our low rates, and with that, we're gonna have to wrap it up. I want to shout out Sharon Moriwaki, the Senator, has a great little newsletter that she sends out. If you're not on it, sign up for it. It's uplifting, and she's sending it about every day. So let's see what happens in the next week. We're gonna hope for the best. It's been a pleasure having Cynthia Sinclair and Stephanie Dalton on this Corona Watch, and I'm once again your guest host for today. We wish Jay Fiedel a happy recovery from an eye surgery that he had, and we will look forward to seeing him and all of you here next week. Okay ladies, thank you so much. Thank you.