Sometimes you dodge a bullet

Along with the usual reasons for wanting to spend part of the winter in Arizona -- avoiding snow, seeking sunlight, visiting friends and relatives, expanding one's mental horizons through travel -- The Kid had made plans for a family vacation elsewhere. She had decided to be generous and once again used her time share resort plan points to book a week in mid-February in Hawai'i.

The first time she shoved us on to an airplane back in 2016 it was just me and the S.O. This time she was able to find a two-bedroom suite in Kona so all three of us could go. At the time, there was some talk on the news about a novel virus affecting a region in China, but it didn't really register with us. We weren't going to China. We were going to Kailua-Kona. Mai tais, ahi ahi, palm trees, tacky shirts. People dropping dead from pneumonia half a world away did not affect us.

Except of course it could have. We traveled through two major airports, both with a lot of international travelers, going to Hawai'i and coming back -- Phoenix and Honolulu. Honolulu especially processes hordes of tourists and business people traveling to and from various Asian destinations. We saw numerous Asian travelers all wearing face masks. It did not register. If anything, we all assumed it was the typical notorious Japanese/Korean/Chinese germaphobia and industrial pollutants fear. It's been pretty common in China for many years for people to wear face masks outdoors because the industrial pollution is so bad. In retrospect, thank you numerous Asian travelers for wearing masks that may have protected some of us naifs from pathogens you were unknowingly exhaling.

[Blogger just did an interesting hiccough. Screen went blank and my draft post wound up published. Very strange. I will continue editing and eventually this may all seem a bit less unfinished. There may even be photos.]

In any case, we had a good time on the Big Island, wandered around playing tourist and doing some of the obligatory stuff (a luau, which turned out to actually be worth what it cost). I stumbled across a promotion being sponsored by local quilt shops -- an island shop hop in which each participating shop gave visitors a free pattern based on traditional Hawaiian petroglyphs -- and The Kid and I also found a decent book store. We dined at a restaurant we found out later is rated as one of the best in Hawaii, not just on one island, and we dined at low budget eateries that served traditional plate lunches. We visited Hawaiian Volcanoes National Park. I wondered again why anyone would want to live within 50 miles of an active volcano, let alone within spitting distance of one. We even lounged by the pool, all in blissful ignorance, cheerfully believing novel coronaviruses were a Chinese problem.

Ferns trying to grow in an old lava flow

That blissful ignorance persisted for several weeks after getting home. Heard occasional news about the virus being found in this country, but, hey, a couple of cases, no big deal. The CDC and the state health departments will handle it. No problem. As a former CDC employee I knew the agency had been worried about outbreaks and national coordination and snuffing stuff before it could spread for a long time. Back in the waning days of the Bush administration I edited the final draft of the National Biosurveillance Strategic Plan that laid out some of the problems and made suggestions for future action. The Obama administration took the issues seriously; a specific office within the CDC was created to address preventing epidemics from turning into pandemics. I was optimistic.

I did not know then that the Moron in the White House in his bizarre eagerness to do as much damage as humanly possible in the shortest amount of time had eliminated that office. I did know he had slashed the CDC budget, but how much of an idiot do you have to be to get rid of an office designed to prevent something that could make The Walking Dead look like a reality show?  Whatever that level is, Trump apparently has achieved it multiple times.

I found myself hoping recently that Trump had managed to French kiss Boris Johnson sometime in the past few weeks, but no such luck.

More thoughts in a day or two.