ON THE MATTER OF PUBLIC HOLIDAYS

Hawaii today celebrates King Kamehameha the First Day as a public holiday. Next Monday, June 19, or Juneteenth, is a Federal holiday. However, 22 states, including Hawaii, do not recognize this as a public holiday. Four of these will begin to honor this day next year, not Hawaii. Juneteenth commemorates the end of slavery. Here are the Hawaii holidays, and note three that only we have:

New Year’s Day: 1st day in January
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day: 3rd Monday in January
Presidents’ Day: 3rd Monday in February
Prince Jonah Kuhio Kalanianaole Day: 26th day in March
Good Friday: Friday before Easter
Easter: Calculating Easter
Memorial Day: Last Monday in May
King Kamehameha I Day: 11th day in June
Independence Day: 4th day in July
Statehood Day: 3rd Friday in August
Labor Day: 1st Monday in September
Veterans’ Day: 11th day in November
Thanksgiving Day: 4th Thursday in November
Christmas: 25th day in December

There are 11 paid Federal holidays, plus every fourth year, January 20, Inauguration Day, but as a paid off-day only in DC, Maryland and Virginia.

The problem about comparing holidays with other countries is that there are inconsistencies regarding a variety of factors. Wikipedia has a list, in holidays/year:

35 Nepal
32 Myanmar
26 Iran
25 Sri Lanka
20-22 Liechtenstein
22 Bangladesh, Egypt
21 Cambodia, India
19 Argentina
18-20 Malaysia
11 China, France, Israel, Kosovo, Luxembourg, New Zealand, Russia, Singapore, USA
10 Belgium
8-10 UK
8 or 9 Ecuador

Switzerland has the least, with 7, but goes up to 15, depending on where you live. Read this article to appreciate the complexity.

Then, there is another list which says Cambodia has the most public holidays with 28. And another that says Nepal only has 30. But added, people there normally work 6 days/week. So you can see how it is difficult to determine which country is most generous.

Here some interesting comparisons regarding hours worked /week/country:

Longest workweek in hours.

54 Mauritania and Tanzania
53 Egypt
52 South Korea (not listed in this source, but another)
51 Bangladesh, Gambia, Senegal
50 Qatar, Burkina Faso, Lesotho
49 Cambodia, Liberia
48 Seven countries

Shortest workweek in hours.

29 Australia, Reunion
30 Micronesia, Iraq, Netherlands
31 Somalia, Kazakhstan, Rwanda
33 Norway, UK
34 Germany, Israel, Argentina, Belgium, Denmark
35 Switzerland, Ecuador, Chad

However, I checked about Australia, and while there seems to be a trend towards a 4-day (32 hours) workweek, the reality today is 36 hours. The USA currently averages 38.7 hours/week.

However, this gets complicated when you crank in vacation time. The Japanese, for example, have long been known to work long hours and not take a full vacations. But this source and graph shows the USA and Japan about the same at 1800 hours/year, or 34.6 hours/week. The UK is a bit lower.

Then there are 83 International Holidays in 2023, as for example:

June 14 World Blood Donor Day
June 16 International Day of the African Child
June 17 World Day to Combat Desertification and Drought

So how does Hawaii celebrate King Kamehameha the First Day? Depends on where.

The Royal Hawaiian Center in Waikiki has festivities from June 6 to 10, but not today.
That Lei Draping Ceremony at Aliiolani Hale happened on June 9.
Honolulu had a floral parade on June 10, but Kona parades today.
For most, this is just another day off.

I'll close with Audition 2 of America's Got Talent. The most noteworthy performance was by Putri Ariani, a 17-year old blind pianist-singer-songwriter from Indonesia. She got a golden buzzer from Simon himself. The audience and judges cried. Her dream is to be accepted to Julliard. Now a cinch.

Another audition you should watch is that of 6-year old Zoe Erianna Cui (click on this to watch her). She sang Born This Way (that was the X-rated version by Lady Gaga...or if you prefer, here is her Grammy effort), and will hereby be known as Baby Gaga. Your day will be materially enhanced by watching both acts. Zoe also writes music. Watch her playing her very own Butterfly in a Beautiful Garden. She is from Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania, and her parents came from the Philippines.

A NEXT COVID SUBVARIANT?

By now most know that the Omicron BA.5 subvariant has become the dominant infectious agent, now accounting for more than 80% of all COVID-19 cases. Very few are aware that a new one, BA.4.6, is sneaking in and steadily rising, now accounting for 13% of sequenced samples . However, as BA.4.6 has emerged from BA.4, while there is uncertainty, the scientific sense is that the latest bivalent booster targeting BA.4 and BA.5 should also be effective for this next threat. One concern is that Evusheld--the only monoclonal antibody authorized for COVID prevention in immunocompromised individuals--is not effective against BA.4.6. Here is a reference as to what this means. A series of two injections is involved. Evusheld was developed by British-Swedish company AstraZeneca, and is a t ixagevimab co-packaged with cilgavimab . More recently, Los Angeles County reported on subvariant BA.2.75.2 . which Tony Fauci termed suspicious and troublesome. This strain has also been spreading in

Part 3: OUR NEXT AROUND THE WORLD ODYSSEY

Before I get into my third, and final, part of this cruise series, let me start with some more newsworthy topics. Thursday was my pandemic day for years. Thus, every so often I return to bring you up to date on the latest developments. All these subvariants derived from that Omicron variant, and each quickly became dominant, with slightly different symptoms. One of these will shock you. There has been a significant decline in the lost of taste and smell. From two-thirds of early patients to now only 10-20% show these symptoms. JN.1, now the dominant subvariant, results in mostly mild symptoms. However, once JN.1 infects some, there seem to be longer-lasting symptoms. Clearly, the latest booster helps prevent contracting Covid. A competing subvariant, BA.2.86, also known as Pirola , a month ago made a run, but JN.1 prevailed. No variant in particular, but research has shown that some of you will begin to lose hair for several months. This is caused by stress more than anythi

HONOLULU TO SEATTLE

The story of the day is Hurricane Milton, now a Category 4 at 145 MPH, with a track that has moved further south and the eye projected to make landfall just south of Sarasota. Good news for Tampa, which is 73 miles north. Milton will crash into Florida as a Category 4, and is huge, so a lot of problems can still be expected in Tampa Bay with storm surge. If the eye had crossed into the state just north of Tampa, the damage would have been catastrophic. Milton is a fast-moving storm, currently at 17 MPH, so as bad as the rainfall will be over Florida, again, a blessing. The eye will make landfall around 10PM EDT today, and will move into the Atlantic Ocean north of Palm Bay Thursday morning. My first trip to Seattle was in June of 1962 just after I graduated from Stanford University. Caught a bus. Was called the Century 21 Exposition . Also the Seattle World's Fair. 10 million joined me on a six-month run. My first. These are held every five years, and there have only been

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