HILO, HAWAII— "I'm trying, but it's not easy," says Sue Lokelani Lee Loy, a Hawaii County Council member and Native Hawaiian who grew up in a small farming community on Native Hawaiian homelands on the Big Island.

"It's been so challenging. It's just so instinctual in us," Lee Loy says of the tradition of greeting others with hugs, kisses and honi – the practice of placing forehead to forehead while inhaling one another's breaths. This exchange of ha, or breath, signifies a deep respect and commitment to each other.

"It's totally awkward and we're still doing it to some extent. We just start coming in for a hug, stop and then say, 'we're exempt,' and reach out to each other anyway."

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Social distancing is hard. But it's especially difficult for Native Hawaiians and other Polynesians, who grew up in close-knit societies where hugs, kisses and honi are an essential part of the culture.

"It's a recognition that we share the same space and responsibilities," Lee Loy explains.

Honi is not uncommon in present-day Hawaii, even as Native Hawaiian cultural practices are steadily eroded by Western influences. In fact, Hawaii Gov. David Ige, of Okinawan descent, was photographed on July 23, 2019, by a local newspaper practicing honi with a Native Hawaiian protesting the construction of a telescope on Mauna Kea, a mountain on the Big Island.

Ige on March 23 acknowledged the challenges of social distancing in a press conference announcing a statewide stay-at-home order.

"As alien as it might be for us here in the Aloha State, we must avoid physical contact with friends and loved ones to protect all of us in this crisis," he said.

As would be expected, people of other nationalities settling in Hawaii over the decades have adopted much of the culture, so hugs are still more common than handshakes, although fewer later arrivals practice honi, considered a particularly Polynesian tradition.

Lee Loy's fellow councilman, Matt Kanealii-Kleinfelder, who married into the Hawaiian culture, says he's having similar problems not reaching out.

"It's just weird," Kanealii-Kleinfelder says. "It's so against what the culture is here."

Emiliana Simon-Thomas, science director at the Greater Good Science Center at the University of California—Berkeley, speaks of "high touch" and "low touch" cultures. She contemplates whether history will show the difference in the speed of coronavirus spread in regions where touch is more culturally entrenched. She points to the fast spread in China and Italy as examples.

"I suspect we will see more stories about the role of culture in the spread of the virus," Simon-Thomas says.

Hawaii, with a population of 1.4 million, had 90 cases as of noon March 24, but testing so far has been limited.

Italy has the most confirmed COVID-19 cases per capita, with 1,145 per 1 million residents, according to consumer data website Statista.

"China, the country with the most cases, has a relatively low figure per million inhabitants, 58, thanks to its massive population and apparent containment for the time being," Statista author Martin Armstrong notes.

Simon-Thomas differentiates between individualist and collectivist cultures.

"Collectivist cultures touch more, while more individualistic cultures touch less," Simon-Thomas says. "In the United States, England, Western cultures, touch is less frequent."

University of Hawaii—Manoa Professor Lilikala Kameeleihiwa is invoking another Hawaiian cultural tradition – kapu, roughly translated as "forbidden," but also containing religious undertones protecting sacred objects and sites – in her awareness campaign, urging Hawaiians to forgo their traditional honi practices.

She's named it "Kapu Ola Aloha," meaning a loving restriction that preserves life. The kapu will be lifted, she says, once the danger of coronavirus infection has receded.

"We don't want to change who we are as Hawaiians," Kameeleihiwa said in a March 13 University of Hawaii News article advising against hugs, kisses and honi. "It's really difficult not to hug and kiss. And yet the ones that we love the most are the ones that we might be endangering if we do so."

It's an irony that the coronavirus pandemic that has so alarmed the world is at the same time depriving people of human touch, the most basic of comforting gestures. Lack of touch is in itself stressful, Simon-Thomas notes.

"Touch is one of the modalities of communication that we have developed over many, many generations in evolution," beginning with primate grooming as a way of establishing and strengthening social bonds and resolving disputes, she says.

Simon-Thomas advises those who's first inclination is to reach out and touch to pause and think through what they are feeling.