A coronavirus outbreak began in Wuhan, China in December 2019.   We were on the Diamond Princess  in the Orient that month .  Came back to Hawaii.   However this same ship on 20January2020 boarded an 80-year old passenger from Hong Kong with a respiratory ailment, and started the international spread.   The Diamond Princess on 3February2020 returned to Yokohama, but had to anchor at sea, for a strange new disease seemed to be spreading. Unknowingly,  we flew from Honolulu to Bangkok, Thailand on 11February2020 . That day the World Health Organization announced the official name for this virus would be COVID-19, CO for corona, VI for virus, D for diseases and 19, the year (2019) it was first discovered. Ultimately, with 2,666 passengers and a crew of 1,045, 712 became infected, with 14 deaths.  Interestingly enough, 20% of the people on the ship were infected, and of those, 2% died.  So far, in the world, there have been 704,753,890 cases and 7,010,681 deaths, a mortality rate of 1%. Pa

A local  Star-Advertiser  article caught my attention:   Hawaii sees rise in COVID-19 positivity amid variant spread Health officials indicated that the FLiRT variants, including KP.1.1, KP.2 and KP.3, are beginning to dominate.  These variants are more immune-invasive, and another wave could be coming this summer. Hospitalization rate in Hawaii Two weeks ago, 27 hospitalized from Covid-19. May 22:  55 patients. Hawaii positivity rate: On May 1:  4.3% Last week:  8.5% This week:  10.5% Definitely going up.  But what is positivity?  Simply, divide the number who tested positive divided by the number who took the test, multiplied by 100.  How high is too high?  Four years ago a  report from Johns Hopkins indicated : The higher the percent positive is, the more concerning it is. As a rule of thumb, however, one threshold for the percent positive being “too high” is 5%. For example, the World Health Organization recommended in May that the percent positive remain below 5% for at least two