 I'm Jay Fidel, this is ThinkDeck. More specifically, this is Coronaville. What's next here on a given Thursday? And we have our regular panel. We have Tim Appichella, Winston Welch, Stephanie Stoll Dalton, and Cynthia Sinclair. And you guys are the greatest. You've taken us through four years, very nearly four years of aggravation with Trump and come out alive and even happy. The question now is whether we should continue to be happy. Yesterday was happiness. It was, you know, it was, it was the realization of all the efforts to make Joe Biden the president and Kamala Harris the vice president, but we are not out of the woods. And I like to talk a little about that, but mostly I like to talk about coronavirus. You know, I went and got my shot because I'm old and on Tuesday, no sooner did I get my shot when there was an article in one of the local papers about how they were running out of vaccine. No sooner did I see that article and I saw articles all over the country about how they're running out of vaccine. And of course, Trump failed to buy 100 million doses that was presented to the federal government a few months ago by Pfizer. And so here we are and Joe Biden is looking for the Defense Production Act, but it's not clear, according to the latest reporting, that that will actually work and create a supply line that will satisfy, you know, the entire population. So far it's only 16% of the population. It's small, 16% or 16 million, maybe 16 million. That's less than 16%. So, you know, what you have now is, you know, not a complete solution. He says 100 million doses in 100 days. Tim Epicella, can he do that? Can he manage that? I think his eyes are bigger than the stomach. I question whether or not the production of, be it the Pfizer or the Moderna, can keep up with that lofty goal. You know, I think as far as implementation of the shot, I think that could be worked out. You can mobilize all sorts of options, you know, be it the military or, you know, just volunteer nurses, you know, you can get those needles into people's arms. I'm concerned about, as the article pointed out yesterday in the Star Advertiser, whether or not there's enough adequate supply or not. Yeah, so what happens to a guy like me who had one shot and I have an appointment for a second, the second shot on the Pfizer, three weeks later, early February, and there's not enough to go around. What happens? Do I turn into a pumpkin, Tim? I was under the impression they actually set aside the second dose, but maybe I'm wrong on that point. Well, I hope you're right, I hope you're right about it. I may be wrong on that point, Jay. I was under the impression at least Queen's Hospital was reserving that second dose and putting it in storage, but that was for nurses and doctors on the A1 program getting their shots. We're now in B1, and you know, that's the 75 or older category, and then soon C1, which is 65, and those that have immune compromised systems. Well, query what happens if you don't, you don't get the second shot for whatever reason. Do you turn into a pumpkin then? Well, only if you're wearing your glass slippers. Yeah, I guess so. I shouldn't refer to pumpkins because pumpkins look like you know who. He whose name should be erased. No, it's like anything else. I mean, you still have the vaccine in you. It's not as effective. And should you contract either the current case of COVID-19 or one of the variants, obviously it's not going to hold up as well. And you'll probably feel the effects of it much greater than if you had your second dose. Winston, you're a worldly guy. You know, if we have trouble here in River City and across the mainland, which we are according to the press having, what about the people in the developing countries? They have, you know, this huge disparity of wealth and therefore a disparity of the availability of the vaccine. You know, to what extent is that going to affect the world? And how do we deal with it? Well, you know, let's just face it. If you're living in the so-called third world or fourth world, you're fairly getting shafted on everything of all types of things or as your resources may or may not get extracted. That inequity is, it just exists. It will eventually, they will catch up because people realize that it comes around full circle. So, you know, we're just getting around to trying to eliminate polio. But there's some holdouts due to, you know, confusion about the science or religious lunacy. So it will get there eventually. However, there seems to be, interestingly enough, countries where they got the BCG vaccine seems to provide some immunity for folks in a broad spectrum. So that's interesting. And we don't know what the real death tolls are in many nations. We can hardly find out the information here. So what the real story is, it's just like, you know, when you read about these things, how many people died in World War I and the estimates range or World War II, they could range by tens of millions in different numbers. So I don't think we'll ever know, Jay, but as far as your question to Tim, the internet, the source of all information that's true says that when I was Googling it, we can always trust Google, said, if you get your first shot, because I was interested in this for the senior members of that I love, like you, if you only get your one shot, how protected are you? Now, we know that, and if the Pfizer and Moderna have said, you need to get two shots for efficacy. But what I read said that you get about 80% with your first shot and then you pull up to about 95% with your second shot. So if all you can get is the first shot, take it and come back and get your second shot. I think it's similar to, well, I don't know. I mean, does anybody know it's to the shingles vaccine? So definitely start with your first one. They are going to have more vaccine. It's coming a year ago, we didn't have any vaccine because we didn't have any COVID, but they started working on it within that week. There will be supplies. There's new AstraZeneca's coming out with one, Johnson Johnson's coming out with one. They're not based on mRNA. There will be supplies rolling out. And so that time we just got to keep up with our own personal care and that of others. And I just saw the CDC or who came out and said, actually, time to wear a double mask with this new strain coming out. So put a little blue one underneath your cotton one. So just as a word to all the smart people who watch our show. Okay. And to all of the old people who watch our show, I just want to say that my experience with Hawaii Public Health, Hawaii Public Health, yeah. Hawaii Pacific Health, HPH, you know, those are the guys who run Stroud and Copilani Hospital and so forth. At peer two, last Tuesday was excellent. They were organized. They were kind. They were friendly. They got the job done. There were really no hitches as far as I was concerned. More than that, they were not bureaucratic. They were friendly and flexible. It was a statement of the Hawaii ethic. They were completely aloha. And that was very good. And the shot itself was painless. The experience was painless. And although I was tired in the afternoon, that pass, I had no side effects at all. So good for them. And then if you guys get into the same situation, you'll see what I mean. Stephanie, not to refer to Winston, but Winston sent around an email this morning and I want to talk about that. It was essentially an article in the Atlantic about how Trump had done damage to the country over his four years. And the damage, we didn't know. We did not know the extent of the damage. We do not know the extent of the damage. We do not, we cannot even calculate until the reflecting pond and the candles. The other day, we just could not digest how many people actually died here and how many mistakes intentional or otherwise he made about dealing with COVID. So the question is, does that affect your sense of optimism right now? Because the fact is, he's still coming to bite us. Things we don't know about will bite us as they are revealed. What do you think of the article? What do you think of Winston's quote? What do you think of Winston? I think highly of Winston's comment philosophies and suggestions and comments. I mean, I think we need that viewpoint to be well represented as Winston does do it. And then he's also this researcher who's finding all of this really important, pithy information from the intellectuals who are good writers and can put out these incredibly informative articles. So yes, I'm depending on Winston as a resource. Yeah, we're only gonna find out more and more, Jay, about what didn't go right. I mean, in fact, I wanted to say that this morning, I looked at the TV this morning too because the governor of New York, the New York is out of vaccine. They have shut down everything. Even all the people that were in appointments, they're shut down. They have no more vaccine. So they're waiting for it and they've got a huge need. So that I think is out here too because I've seen notices that HPH, Hawaii Pacific Health, they're out of vaccine for peer too. Also, I don't know how much longer that's gonna go on. So we're awaiting it and we can understand it a little bit. We in Alaska, they've got to ship it up here or out here. New York's right there where they're getting it right there on the East Coast. So it's a little bit frightening. And I agree, my concern has always been that there wasn't enough planning, as usual with the last administration's work, including all the things that Biden is correcting now, just a knee-jerk reaction, just whatever went through his head. And then with no consideration for the context of interconnectedness, the value representation that the U.S. is overall big policy history. It's just, all of it is going to turn out to be very harmful for our nation and our population. I just think we will discover a lot and have a lot yet to suffer for having such incompetence in our leadership and almost no policy making. One of the things in Winston's quote that he sent around was that sometimes you don't know you've been wounded and sometimes you find out later like we are, I believe, going to find out. And sometimes those wounds that you didn't know about that you find out later can be fatal. So my point is, my point anyway, is that we're not out of the woods. There's more to come, there's other shoes to drop. Even if you never see or hear of Trump again, he's laid in so many mistakes. And sabotages, Cynthia, what about the sabotages? I believe the pardons, oh, pardon me, the sabotages were like they were their time bombs. And we're going to see more of that as it comes out. But are you following the sabotages? All the things he's done to make life harder for Biden and the country? Well, some of them, yes. I know I have some statistics about the virus and the vaccines. And it's stated that we got 35,990,200 distributed to us. But only 16,525,300 have been administered, which means we have 19,464,869 doses that are not administered. Where are they? What are they doing with them? That's my question. Why aren't they sending some of those to New York if New York is completely out? So I wonder how much of the decision-making on who got how many doses was sort of predicated on whether or not they were Democratic states or Republican states. Because it seems to me that all the Democratic states are the ones that are going, wait a minute, we need help here. I have some more statistics that I think are very important and things that we need to not ever forget. And this is the days with the highest reported deaths. January 7th had 3,949. The 8th had 4,035. The 13th, excuse me, the 12th had 4,462, which is the highest. Then the 13th went back down a little up by months, though, 3,963. And then on January 20th, the day of the inauguration, we had 4,229 Americans die, most likely alone. And I got some quotes from some interviews that were happening this morning on CNN. And it was, I have a quote from Jeff Zeint, who is the White House COVID coordinator. And he says, what we've inherited from the Trump administration is so much worse than we could have imagined. He also went on to say that the only things that they know information-wise were things that were regular public knowledge. There was nothing internal handed to them. And so Dr. Atul Gawande, who is on the COVID advisory board, he said that the vaccine plan was non-existent. They didn't have one, there was no plan. They were all breakthrough and no follow-through. And I thought those were some important facts for our video show today. Yeah, we don't know the extent of it yet. No, I mean, he went in there and the White House cold in many ways, the transition was really not complete. That may be an understatement. So Winston, what is it the priority that he deal with COVID? Seems to me, he can't get to the economy until he does something with COVID. And he may not be able to do COVID very quickly. You know, Joe Biden has so much to do, but I think what Joe Biden does is just standing there yesterday and giving his message, having the people that he's put into his cabinet that represents the best of America, they will carry out to the best of their abilities. When they were taking their oaths on the stand, I really felt like these people have my best interest at heart. You know, I was especially pleased with Joe Biden. When he said he represents all Americans, he really means it. He's not a, of course he was a Democrat, but he is there for all of us. And I think folks that really looked at that can understand he's a sincere person and he will do the best job he can with COVID, with the economy, with racism, all of it. But can he succeed in beating off a major depression, economic depression in this country? You know, he has to, there's not another choice. So he will, he will do all that he can for our nation. We can't predict tomorrow, Jay. No one predicted coronavirus a year ago. Well, I suppose a lot of people predicted that something like it would come about. But at this point, you know what? He's gonna do the best job that he can. And I think that at least we have someone with motivation, with brains. Oh yeah, we're infinitely better. I mean, it's a sea change. So let's not, let's just let him do what he can do and the time that he can do it because you know they're going absolutely great neck pace to get as much done as they can. And he says, what a hundred million doses in the first hundred days. If he thinks that they can do that, you know what they have a goal and they are marshaling as many people as they can. Like Cynthia said, they got 19 million. They haven't administered. That's a fifth of the way they're already. So we're gonna see a lot more coordination and cooperation with state federal and local entities than we have ever seen before. Okay, I'm feeling a little better, but I don't think we're out of the woods on this. And ten, you know, we are looking for, we're looking for an impeachment trial in the Senate lest we forget. You know, so many things have happened since the inauguration and, you know, about these things, these things about COVID and all the 17 proclamations yesterday trying to reverse Trump's things, Trump's destruction. But the fact is that we have to deal with the trial and, you know, it's softening. What I mean is two things softening. One is Trump, we predicted this, right? You take him away from Twitter. You take him off the front page. You take him out of the news, television news media, and the power just sluffs right off. And to some extent, I think that's happening. I think it's not clear yet. But then we still have this problem, this nagging problem. Didn't we set up an impeachment here? Don't we have to do that too? Are we gonna have that? Or people like Josh Hawley in the Senate could have stand in the way. There are a lot of, may I remind you, there are a lot of Republicans in the Senate who don't want to impeach him. So where are we on that, Tim? Have we forgotten about that? Will we forget about it? Will it happen or not? Wow, multi-faceted question there, Jay, and a good one. I listened to the interview on 60 Minutes with Nancy Pelosi and then Joy Reid had an interview with Nancy Pelosi. And Nancy Pelosi looked very committed to sending the articles of impeachment to the Senate for the trial. I think there's some strategy discussions taking place in the Capitol. If I was Nancy Pelosi, I'd have to weigh the balance of the passion and the emotion for justice against the president who incited a riot on the Capitol, excuse me, versus the cooperation she may be getting and Chuck Schumer may be getting from a cooperative GOP because they know right now they've been painted with the same stain of almost treason since January 6th, since the storming of the Capitol and the deaths of police officers and four other individuals. So they don't want that stain on them. So right now they appear to be very cooperative and my evidence for that was the comment that Mitch McConnell made on the Senate floor. Basically, in black and white terms, stating that Donald Trump was responsible for the unleash of the mob that attacked the Capitol. And that's if you know, Mitch McConnell is very, very selective in his word choice and he doesn't come out, especially on the Senate floor and be that overt in his statements. So it's a balance I think. And yes, the answer is the trial would move forward. It will move forward. And there's an inner part of me that says it may be successful. It's the same inner feeling I had that somehow Georgia election could be pulled off and that did happen. All logic said to me, no, it's not possible, but it did occur and I think it's possible to get the 17 GOP senators to back this one up. And I think of Mitch McConnell's on board, we may well see that. Yeah, and you know what? COVID is an issue there. It's not in the charges, but it is an issue. Everybody in the country, everybody right thinking in the country knows that he wrecked us. He caused 400,000 lives. How do you start counting that? And he did it with hubris. So I think that's part of getting rid of him having the impeachment succeed. But Stephanie, we still have the anti-vaxxers out there. We still have these QAnon people sitting, actually sitting in Congress. We still have these guys walking around with assault rifles among us. We still have a lot of Trumpers. How do they play in all of this? How do they play in helping Biden or hurting Biden or trying to stop him the way the Republicans try to stop and did successfully stop Obama on so many issues? They're still with us. I can tell you, because we get mail from them on our YouTube postings. And I always say, when I send them around and say, they're still out there and they are. And you can see them even on the liberal channels that I watch, they still do stories on them. So how do they play? Well, I think you're of course right. And it's deep. It's sunk in even more deeply into our world, our US world than ever before. And as we know, Timothy McVeigh, who lived down the building in Oklahoma City, he was a member of one of these groups. So their history is real. Their actions are completely destructive and against all of our precious goals and values. But I think that what's happening, I've heard that there are efforts to tamp down. In addition to the tech people getting the Twitter, getting tamp off the Twitter and shutting up some of these voices. So cutting off some of these voices who have overstepped. And that overstepping now is being examined and not just accepted as carte blanche free speech, First Amendment. It's not all First Amendment. So we're getting a little clearer and who knows, maybe we'll have another Supreme Court look at this, but that free speech doesn't mean you can talk about things that will lead to anarchy and to destruction and to violence. So there are some actual limits on free speech. I've heard some of these very expert lawyers talking about. Now these haven't been retested again, but as you know, the history of court cases that there's been an approach to it, but it's never been this much of an advance of these people and their actions to get enough rulings that we understand better about the First Amendment. So for now, the tech companies have taken that on and I hear lots of criticism of what they've done that that's imposing a restriction on free speech. So that question is coming out loud and clear. And then there's also now an effort, I don't know if it's the FCC, but whoever controls the airways for all of these multitudinous right wing radio stations, they're everywhere and they're all in all of these places, you know, in our country rural and Western and mountain and all of these areas have these people talking about the militia issues and they're discussing their concerns and their complaints and their criticisms. So until there truly is some abatement of that feed and that influence on these people, we're gonna still have this right here in our lab. So we'll see as we go. Having that power, that takes care of some of it. So we've already got some interventions in place, but we've got a long way to go with that. I mean, I'd like to hope that Biden just presenting himself in this way. And I know he's been criticized or oh, unity, this unity of that, not the font, you know, they're ridiculing him. How do you like this unity? But I think that he's powerful, he's a powerful model. And I hope that that will also have some impact. Hold that thought, hold that thought. We really have to see that come true. You know, over the past four years, Cynthia, we've seen the reputation of the country decline. Many countries pity us, you know. We were being judged, we were being judged and we failed, we failed for the past four years in the eyes of millions, hundreds of millions of people around the world with Trump. And of course, you know, the biggest test right now in the immediate center, you can join the World Health Organization, you know, you can try to put back the relationship with Europe, you can try to, you know, have a better, more fair-minded relationship with a lot of countries in the world that have lost respect for us. But it seems to me that the immediate thing is the pandemic. Why? Because the world is looking at us and we come up with one problem after another and dealing with it. We did that through the Trump time and now we're still having problems in deployment, distribution and all that. And so, you know, the question I put to you is, you know, if I get my shot, either as an individual or a country, okay? And the guy across the street sees that I get my shot and he doesn't get his shot and he sees the disparity we were talking about. There's lots of sides to that question. How do we look to the world if we don't seem to give a rip about other countries at this point in time? And of course, the natural inclination is, I want mine first. This is life and death. I want mine first. But what about our image in the country now, in the world now over this? Well, it's only been one day. And in that one day, he's already done so much and it wasn't even a full day. He didn't even start till about one o'clock. So if he can do that much in a half a day, I have hope that we will be moving forward every single day, a little bit. We can't just, you know, snap our fingers and have everything be great and be organized and have this great plan. I know that from those quotes before, that they were shocked that there was no other internal information to be found. So they have to start from scratch. So I think, like you said yesterday on Rediscovering America, we need to give them a bit more than that 100 day honeymoon, you know? Maybe we need to give them a little bit of extra time because they are not only dealing with nothing, they're dealing with being undermined. And like you said, landmines planted everywhere and who knows when they're gonna blow up? You know, and we've got people like the minority leader, Kevin McCarthy, just walking back every single thing he said about all of it. You know, oh, I had, I said it was no good. You know, I never, you know, bought into the lie and all these other things that, you know, that are just a big lie. And so we have a lot of Republicans doing that. And that alone is going to change the atmosphere of everything. So I think we need to have hope, be positive, like Winston. We should avoid taking issue with him. Of course, you know, the First Amendment, we have to express ourselves, but when we talk about honeymoon, we should talk about giving him a break. It would not be to our interest to have a squabble about some of his policies, how they don't really work so well and he's making a mistake here and there. You know, we have to really give him a complete honeymoon and not criticize him at least for a period of time about what his policies are. Otherwise, we're buying into the remnants of the Trump world. Don't watch Fox News because that's what they're doing. Yeah, no surprise, but I'm afraid I can't watch that. Winston, we're almost out of time and I'd like to go around the horn here and get your thoughts here in this moment. As Cynthia says, let's forget we're only one day out. We're one day post inauguration. On the other hand, here, this group, this panel has followed, you know, the country and so many of these issues for a long time. And so we should have a sense of where we are on the continuum. Are we going to be okay or are these things, these wounds we don't know about, are they gonna catch up with us? And more than that, what do we need to do to preserve our opportunities and improve our chances of dealing with this and coming out okay? We're doing it right now, Jay. Each one of us has to recommit to the best and highest ideals of this nation and this is a great nation. We have stumbled and fallen these last four years. We made a bad choice as a nation and now we have to fess up to it and repair. And I was just looking at, you know, Facebook says, here's your picture, you know, four years ago. Well, it happened to be the day after the inauguration. Remember when everybody showed up and marched around the Capitol and wore colorful things and just said, no, this is not going to stand. This is not who we are. That's right. It was exactly that. And we knew then this was an aberration of our ideals and who we are as a people. And while we might be misled by certain elements of the media or by demagogues or whatever, we have come back to our roots. We have to pick up, dust off, find our better selves and move on. And that's all that we can do. We have to do it individually, governmentally, corporately. These corporations have to step up and stop sponsoring ads on these horrible stations that just promote lies. Yeah, you know, it's true. It's a good point. We know what we have to do. Trump has taught us what we have to do. Yes, he has. And for that, we can say, he has shown us, he has shown us where we need to shore up. And so that's our job right now. And I have full faith and confidence that we will do that. And we will bring back our brothers and sisters in this nation who, for whatever reason, supported him in the past. I don't think they do now. And I don't, increasingly, they will not as time goes. I hope so. Stephanie, last words. I want to say the good news. I never thought that I would see a headline outside of the US on a paper which came out of Europe. And it said, it's over. So, it's over. So there's validation that they were screened too. They're so, they so understand us, don't they? It's like after 9-11, in French, I can't do very well on this, but it's a two, two, new songs, two, Zamele can. We are all American, you know? They do care. We still have the connection we had in the time of the revolution. Cynthia, what are your last words? I mean, I just, can I just say one more thing and that for four years, five, four years, Americans have all of us to whatever degree have followed the rules. We have allowed the rule of law. We all tolerated this. We abided by the law. So there's lots to say about that we did what we say we do and we need to take credit for a good job of that throughout the four years. Yeah, but I tell you me, I can still feel the whiz of that bullet by my ear. It was close. Cynthia, your final thoughts? Misinformation is a rampant problem still to this day. And just because Trump is gone, excuse me, just because the maniac is gone, does not mean that the misinformation is gonna stop because it's not. It doesn't only come from him. And I think I'm a good sort of example of how anyone can fall prey to the misinformation. I thought I was following this great lead to go check out this Dominion company and it shows me that not only do they put it out there for the misinformation for the Republicans or these conservative people, but it's also couched differently. Like for me, it was couched that Dominion was owned by a Russian company. For them, it's couched that Dominion was owned by a Venezuelan company. So it's like we have to be very, very careful about everything we read. Yeah, yeah. Let me add that part of this is the emergence of the internet and social media and where you get your news from sources that are not necessarily reliable and that one of the ways to really get your news best is in a group of discussion, even on Zoom or like this, where you can bat it around and you can test out your ideas or what you've heard and somebody can say, no, Jay, you're all wet about that. I love when that happens. So Tim, tell me I'm all wet. You're not all wet. You're just not all wet. And you got your vaccination, I'm happy for you. You know, let me just, I like to just end by saying, you know, you made a reference to a bullet whizzing by your ear. And that is a great analogy because that's exactly what happened to our democracy, the Republic. And we had a clumsy and net assassin who shot that bullet past your ear. And so as we move forward in the nation, as Joe Biden in the administration moves forward and repair that, which we don't know yet that needs to be repaired, repair that which we know is damaged and broken, we're also gonna have to institute justice. And we had an assassin who made it, who rang out a shot at us and this democracy and that cannot go unanswered. And it has to serve as a signpost for any new would be Trump that comes around the corner, be a Democrat, independent or Republican that you're not gonna be successful. And these stop measures need to be put in place, fortified so that the Republic is preserved and democracy is preserved and the media is not manipulated to serve that purpose. There it is. Okay, I'd like to add one other thought is that George Santayana thing about he who doesn't remember history is doomed to repeat it. And we have to remember what Trump did. We couldn't block it out. We shouldn't try to forget it even though it was so unpleasant. We should remember it and we should treat it as part of a historical continuum. And if we let it go without requiring accountability, my guess is we will repeat it. So it's really important that we see it in an historical context. Thank you, Tim. Thank you, Stephanie. Thank you, Cynthia. Thank you, Winston. Great discussion. Look forward to the next time next week. Aloha.