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Positive reinforcement, incentives still needed

The carrot has not been working, so here comes the pandemic stick. The Hawaii State Department of Education’s announcement Wednesday that it will require COVID-19 vaccinations for all public school student-athletes, athletic staff and volunteers signaled an escalation in the war of wills between officials and skeptics. A day later, Hawaii Gov. David Ige doubled down by declaring all state and county workers will be required to be vaccinated or possibly face termination. Ige did so with the support of the county mayors, including Maui County Mayor Michael Victorino. As ...

A dash to freedom

Even without completing her 200-meter heat on Monday, Belarusian sprinter Krystsina Tsimanouskaya had the run of her life. Or maybe even a run for her life. First Tsimanouskaya rightly complained on Instagram about the last-minute decision to put her in the 4x400-meter relay, an event she had not trained for, after a teammate did not qualify because she hadn’t taken enough anti-doping tests. Then Belarusian Olympic officials tried to hustle Tsimanouskaya out of Tokyo, citing her “emotional and psychological condition.” Via social media — a medium she deployed effectively in ...

Getting to the bottom of Jan. 6

On Jan. 6, Americans witnessed on live television what few could have imagined: a violent, real-time invasion of the U.S. Capitol as part of an attempt to halt the peaceful transfer of power from one president to the next. It has taken until now, seven months later, to even begin the congressional investigation that should have begun soon after these events. But that delay has not dimmed the power of the gut-twisting testimony offered last week by four police officers who found themselves in hand-to-hand combat that day, determined to protect the Capitol and its inhabitants at the risk ...

Time zone gamesmanship

The Tokyo Summer Olympics has us thinking back to when Monday Night Football was tape delayed in Hawaii. Before ESPN took over in fall 2006, it was on ABC and started in the islands at 6:30 p.m., usually well after the games were finished on the Mainland. If you were planning to watch, you had to be careful not to learn the score. This became an art some of us called, “radio silence.” How quaint to think you could simply turn off your car radio and be shielded. Now you also need to power down your phone, computer, watch, TV, coffee maker, golf cart and whatever other device that ...

’70s inflation lessons wrong

Anybody who remembers the 1970s remembers the Great Inflation. They probably also remember what happened next, when the Federal Reserve under Paul Volker tightened the money supply, driving down prices by driving down the economy, forcing two recessions that lowered consumer spending and increased unemployment. For the last four decades, inflation has been not much more than a bad memory. This year, however, it has reappeared as a cause for concern. Fear of a return to 1970s-style inflation is driving calls for a retreat from the free-spending goals of the Biden administration, which ...

Thwarting vaccine efforts

Biologically speaking, viruses are not alive. They don’t need to be alive to harm us. The microscopic parasites thrive in the gray area of the undead and wreak havoc on the living by hijacking our cells to replicate. This is the case with SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes the disease that has hijacked our world and caused civilization to grind to a near halt. Humankind has been studying viruses since the 1890s. We know a great deal about how they operate and how to control them. This is why it is mind-blowing that so many state and national lawmakers work so egregiously to impede ...