He knew his men were carrying venereal diseases, and he tried to keep them away from the native women. His journals remark on the health of the people, and the absence of disease. Cook visited the island of Ni‘ihau, on the far northwestern end of the chain, in January 17 of that year. Thus the introduction of the first outside diseases in 1778, with the arrival of Captain Cook, was catastrophic. This made them “virgin populations” who had not, through exposure, developed resilience or immunities. The Hawaiian people, arriving here more than a thousand years ago after millennia of migration out of Southeast Asia, were similarly cut off from the rest of their species, and-like the native peoples of the Americas-never experienced the diseases that had affected the Old World. Plants and birds that got here adapted to suit the local environment, creating a place where 97 percent of all native plant species and most of the native birds are found nowhere else on earth. The Hawaiian islands have been referred to as “the last landfall”: about 2,500 miles from the nearest other island, and further than that from the nearest continent, the islands evolved in relative isolation.
To understand the eagerness behind Hawai‘i residents to shut down the islands to travel, the current epidemic must be understood in geographic and historical context. (On Saturday, Ige ordered that all incoming travelers be quarantined for 14 days and an emergency, statewide stay-at-home order was effective as of this morning.) This is not an easy call, as the visitor industry is a major portion of the economy. Hence many locals have been pushing the mayors and Governor David Ige to shut down the islands completely to outside travel. Foreign diseases have come through here before, and they have inflicted unfathomable damage.
Tensions have run hot as visitors demand “Where is the aloha?” and residents insist that visitors show their aloha by leaving.īecause one thing Hawaiians know about is epidemics. Unsurprisingly, many local people here-and Native Hawaiians in particular-have been publicly (and not always gently) encouraging visitors to go home and stay away-a trend seen on other islands and remote places. At this time we are hopeful that there is no community contagion. Here on the island of Kaua‘i, where I reside, only four have been reported to date-two are visitors who got sick on Maui and decided to travel on to Kaua‘i anyway, one is a resident returning from travel, and the fourth is another visitor. According to the Hawai‘i Department of Health, as of March 24, the state has seen 90 cases of infection from coronavirus since the beginning of the outbreak.