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Oahu residents have heard more than enough times that our island is “headed in the wrong direction” with the COVID-19 pandemic.

We have now entered into  which shutters all but essential businesses for the next two weeks. Public beaches and parks are closed to assist police in enforcing bans on outdoor gatherings. An aggressive surge testing campaign is now underway to get as many people tested as possible, to identify any hidden sources of transmission.

But in spite of all this, no one actually seems to believe or act like we are winning the war against the coronavirus.

Every day around noon, the state’s Joint Information Center reports and the local media in turn announces the key takeaways. And while many have called for the state to provide greater transparency and granularity in terms of data for the public to review, in many ways, the constant barrage of numbers seems to be desensitizing everyone to the crisis.

A New ‘Living Room War’

During the Vietnam War, both the Pentagon under  and the news media became obsessed with metrics and data. Every night, the news would superimpose on the public’s living room TV screens a summary of the total number of American troops deployed and the total counts of deaths on all sides.

McNamara, who by experience prior to serving in office was  who had helped revolutionize corporate America with data science, was obsessed with developing calculations, forecasts and models regarding the situation in Vietnam.

Instead of a decisive, thorough in or out approach to the conflict, America stair-step escalated the conflict over time, tip-toeing over political ramifications. Instead of leadership, this resulted in micromanagement; and instead of victory, America’s operations in Vietnam . America was neither able to win the war or lose the war; but it was told it had no choice but to keep fighting it.

The American public quickly grew tired of seeing bad numbers every day, giving rise to massive protests and calls to end the war.

In the almost eight months that Hawaii has been fighting the coronavirus, there are so many similar parallels, albeit on an accelerated scale. We have become obsessed with the ritual of tracking daily case numbers, either as a justification for stepping up interventions or opening everything up. We are escalating restrictions slowly over time, but never making any decisive, lasting progress.

The public feels micromanaged by what seem like confusing and hard-to-follow emergency restrictions. Online and in protests across the state, we see people protesting vociferously in opposition to wearing masks, staying at home, . And worst of all, our state and county governments don’t seem to be on the same page when it comes to fighting this war against COVID-19.

Kirk Caldwell’s Quagmire

Last week, as sustained daily cases in the 200s continued to flare up on Oahu, Honolulu Mayor Kirk Caldwell surprised the public when, with the U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams at his side, he announced a second stay-at-home order for Oahu.

And while Gov. David Ige signed off on Caldwell’s request to tighten restrictions, one can’t help but raise brows over the fact that Ige would have been well within his authority to just issue the same orders himself rather than punting the decision to Honolulu.

But no sooner did Caldwell announce his order, Ige followed up by sending an email to the state in which he wrote, “I have approved Mayor Caldwell’s request … This order goes into effect at 12:01 a.m. on Thursday, August 27 and lasts for two weeks until Thursday, September 9. All State employees are considered critical infrastructure employees and are thus exempt from this order and should be working as directed by their department.”

Caldwell would tell the public, “If I had it my way, I’d close all schools for two weeks.”

We need our government to be in agreement with their own policies and to practice what they preach.

If he had his way? The question some Hawaii State Teachers Association members had to ask themselves was, ?

What is the point of telling people to stay home, but exempting public schools on Oahu? ?

If Apple and Amazon can address some of the most complex customer service problems online by text or mobile applications, why can’t our local government serve us in the same way remotely?

Why is the city concerned about infections and banning gatherings, but the State Judiciary ? Even though the deadline , one has to wonder why is there such a disconnect and lack of unity of effort between state agencies, the governor and the City and County of Honolulu?

Are we fighting to win a war against COVID-19, or are we just fighting a living room war to contain the numbers? If our state and county governments aren’t pulling in the same direction, how can we expect the public to be onboard with this pandemic effort?

People are already acting as if this pandemic is lost, but we haven’t even begun this fight yet. We need our government to be in agreement with their own policies and to practice what they preach. We need one COVID-19 policy, consistently applied, and seen all the way through to victory.

Stop focusing so much on the numbers, and start focusing on the solution. Data is good, but the most important question is, what are we going to do about it?