LIHU‘E — The shifting dynamics of the pandemic continue on, and last week Mayor Derek Kawakami discussed the challenges the island has faced thus far.
“I feel honored to be placed in a leadership role during one of the biggest challenges. I think leaders always ask themselves, ‘what is it that I can handle?’ I’m getting a taste of it right now,” Kawakami said.
“This island has given my family all the way back from my grandfather who came here from Japan, so much opportunity that I would do it a million times over, with a challenge a million times bigger than this. That’s what most people on this island feel for this island.”
Aside from policy and geography, what about the Kaua‘i community has helped keeping COVID transmission relatively low?
Kaua‘i is known as being very independent. The majority of the people on this island know how to come together and collectively make sacrifices for the greater good of their neighbor.
Although we have a relatively limited health-care capacity on this island, we weren’t seeing the tremendous capacity issues that the other islands were faced with. And I don’t know what that is attested to. But I do know that, early on, this island made it a priority to get our most-vulnerable and our aging population vaccines. And once we’re able to get our people that layer of protection, we emerged and opened the visitor industry. And although we saw a spike in cases, I really feel that most people are still doing the right thing.
Kaua‘i came out very strong with high vaccination rates initially, but we’re seeing a drop off with other islands surpassing us with initiated vaccinations. What do you think is the cause of that drop-off?
Upfront, our economy took a hit. We focused our efforts on vaccines. We didn’t have the ability to have contact tracing, our health-care workers tending to sick people and have a robust vaccine program.
Those people that are contact tracing and tending to patients are also the same people that are running vaccine clinics. So, we said, ‘Look, we’re a small island, we don’t have the ability to juggle. We’re going to figure out one thing that we’re going to do really well and focus our energy and efforts (and) all move in one direction. And we’re going to blitz on vaccines. We’re going to give people this armor, to be able to reemerge with that layer of protection.’
Unfortunately, early on this virus was so politicized. There is so much misinformation out there and so much noise that people that were on the fence really got confused as to what voice was resonating. We try to tell people to focus on the science and the health of it. But by then, the misinformation and the toxicity of having politics intertwined in a disaster was already muddying the waters.
I think the other islands are seeing an uptick in vaccines because they’re dealing with a lot more pain than this island has had to deal with. It doesn’t become reality until it’s impacting their mother or somebody they know themselves and it becomes a real situation. One of the double-edged-sword issues that we’re going to have to deal with is (that) we might keep this island so darn safe that people drop their guard and (think) that maybe it’s not as serious as it really is.
Looking at specifically the Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander populations, why do you think their vaccination rates are trailing behind other demographics on the island?
It is tremendously sad. I do think a lot of it is misinformation. Initially, a lot of our decisions were made to protect those vulnerable populations.
Demographically, who gets impacted the hardest? It’s those with low-to-moderate incomes, those with underlying health conditions and our elderly population; those that have a language barrier, minority groups; and those that don’t have access to good health insurance and health care.
Those are the people that government should be protecting. To see hesitancy because of the misinformation saddens me. Teaching history in our schools is very important because we don’t want to repeat our past mistakes.
We as a state have been trying to reach deep into Pacific Islander and Native Hawaiian communities to make vaccine accessibility as convenient as can. Our mobile-vaccine van goes directly into the neighborhoods. (We are) having deep conversations with community leaders (from) groups of people that we’re trying to reach out to. It has been challenging, but we’re still not going to give up. If we send a vaccine van out there and we get a few people vaccinated, then that is a few more people that we’re protecting. That’s our job.
As the mayor, how are you tackling the pandemic fatigue in our community?
Fatigue hits everybody, and I’m tired of this pandemic as well. But some of the ways that you combat fatigue is to create as much normalcy in our environment as possible: get into a routine. That is one of the reasons why things like allowing our kids to play sports, opening skate parks in the middle of the pandemic, getting kids back into the classroom, getting people back to work, having the ability to go to a restaurant and eat dinner inside, and going to the beach (are so important).
What helped you and your family personally manage pandemic fatigue?
It’s my family: my wife and daughter and my son. We are just the weirdest, quirkiest, nerdiest family.
We get through these big challenges by just doing things a lot of other families are doing. We all got into like plants during the pandemic, like, across the nation, people all of a sudden started gardening.
But really, what gets us through is surfing. I remember early in the pandemic, when they were defining what’s an essential activity and what’s not. I had to basically say, ‘if you guys don’t allow surfing, I’m going to blow my lid on this thing.’ I think the ocean is very comforting. What it does is it makes me realize how small I really am. You’re at your most vulnerable (when) you’re out in that ocean. It’s very humbling, and it’s very centering. It’s balancing for me.
For a lot of people, when we’re out there surfing, there is no pandemic.
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Laurel Smith, staff writer and photographer, can be reached at 245-0424 or lsmith@thegardenisland.com.
