Cover Story

Janet Price, a retired physician, fills a needle with the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine during a free vaccination clinic May 6 at 44 Lakeside Ave.

ASHLEY GREEN/ TELEGRAM & GAZETTE

LOOKING AHEAD

WO R C E S T E R B E G I N S T O C O N T E M P L A T E L I F E A F T E R PA N D E M I C

Veer Mudambi

Worcester Magazine USA TODAY NETWORK

Every year, Colin Novick camps and section-hikes the Appalachian Trail. Or he did — until last year. As an outdoor pursuit, hiking might have been considered one of the few activities relatively unaffected by the pandemic — and for many, that might have been the case. But for the serious hiker, it’s often necessary to book a motel room in the area the day before in order to make a dawn start on a trail the next morning. That meant dealing with interstate COVID guidelines, restrictions on visitation, testing requirements and quarantine periods. Given Massachusetts’ frequent “red” status for infection rates, even going next door to Rhode Island proved impractical.

Instead, 2020 was a year of “minihikes,” as Novick called them, staying in the Worcester area. After receiving the vaccine, the chance to visit new terrain and find the local quirkiness of another place, he said, “sounds like a frozen container of Cool Whip that I have been longing for a taste of for over a year now.”

The COVID-19 vaccine has come to symbolize the return to normalcy for which we have all been yearning. While it may not be quite as cut and dried — precautions still need to be taken — receiving the vaccine will no doubt provide a very real sense of freedom.

Traveling to reunite with family and friends or travel for physical recreation that sustains us in hard times is crucial to our state of mind. “We’re like trees, all

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interconnected and we need to see and hear other people’s presence — it’s just important for a healthy existence,” said Temperance Staples, who runs an equity vaccine clinic at the YWCA. Others, she pointed out, are relieved to just continue the work they’ve been doing over the past year, without the fear of infection.

“Working from home is just not a choice for some people,” said Staples. Those who come to the equity clinic have been working throughout the pandemic, many of them people of color, and face the greatest exposure, said Staples, including WRTA drivers, factory workers and restaurant staff. For these Worcester residents, the vaccine will go a long way toward relieving the anxiety that comes with going into work every day. “I’ve heard from people saying ‘I felt like I was going to catch my death,’” Staples recounted.

David Connor, who works at the Worcester Historical Museum, is also ready to get back to work in a worry-free environment. “I work with a lot of elderly people, so I’m just happy to be out and not worry about infecting someone,” he said, as vaccination rates rise and herd immunity inches closer.

Connor has already seen the new “Mortal Kombat” movie in a theater, which was moderately full, as most indoor establishments are still operating with capacity limits to follow social distancing protocols. While he usually eats outdoors anyways in the warm weather, Connor hopes that “we do a culture shift in terms of outdoor dining since a number of businesses invested in outdoor set-ups — hope that stays.” One thing that he really loved was that people were not inside as much. “It has gotten people back in touch with the outdoors.”

Travel is something else Connor is particularly looking forward to, since it means being able to see his family again. With family in Louisiana, driving was simply not an option for Connor, so a year and half without seeing his family at all was a challenge, he admitted, but domestic trips aren’t the only thing he’s planning. “Trips to Europe were just announced,” he said, and plans are already underway to meet some friends in Madrid. “It will be quite the reunion.”

Michelle Santana-Ramirez, a wraparound coordinator for the Worcester Public Schools, on the other hand, was city-bound. After her second dose, Santana-Ramirez got her vaccinated friends together and hopped on a train to Boston to see the latest exhibits at the art museum. “I hate driving in Boston so I always take the T,” she explained, “but just taking public transportation on a train for an hour and a half, I don’t think I would have done that if I was unvaccinated.”

Family and community, in addition to work, seem to be the driving factors for people to get vaccinated, Staples observed. Some want to see their grandchildren, or return to a co-parenting arrangement with their neighbors. Others still didn’t want to but admitted they were there because everyone around them was getting it, she said.

Santana-Ramirez said this type of social pressure is a useful tool in order to reach herd immunity. She has also encountered vaccine hesitancy among her family and friends. “I was quite shocked

Worcester resident Colin Novick on the Metacoment Monadnock Trail, with Mt. Monadnock in the background. COLIN NOVICK

Prince Asare of Worcester rolls down his sleeve after receiving the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine April 30 at the MetroWest-Westborough Regional Vaccination Clinic at the DoubleTree Hotel in Westborough.

Michelle Santana-Ramirez at a place that is special to her in Greenhill Park Friday, April 30. RICK CINCLAIR/TELEGRAM & GAZETTE

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that one of my friends who was a nurse was worried about getting it,” she recalls. However, after seeing SantanaRamirez get vaccinated, her friend soon followed suit.

Of the three brands, Johnson & Johnson has been the most appealing due to needing only one shot rather than two. Outreach workers would field calls from hundreds of people about the single shot vaccine, Staples said. However, she emphasized that the brand available depends on what a clinic gets from the state, so the “best vaccine you can get is the one being offered today,” she said, “but if they’re more likely to show up for the vaccine that they want, we’ll try our best.”

April 19, when the vaccine became generally accessible to all ages, roughly coincided with the Johnson & Johnson pause. “What we expected to be a massive flood of people was undermined by what we can only surmise to be vaccine hesitancy,” said Staples. This was certainly part of it, but as residents called in, it became clear that many were opting to wait until the Johnson & Johnson vaccine was approved, rather than receive one of the other two.

Another commonly mentioned concern is the speed at which the vaccine was developed and whether there was time for proper testing. However, speed and safety are not mutually exclusive and it is not unheard of for vaccines to be fast tracked. This is not the first time a drug has been expedited for the wellbeing of the global public, with a similar effort taken for anthrax. Though for COVID, the global concentrated effort toward a vaccine was historic, so “of course it was developed quickly,” she said. “If there was the same effort for cancer or heart disease, we would probably have more things on the market for those, too.”

Being located in a “majority-minority” neighborhood, the demographic that the equity clinic serves has also been historically wary of vaccines. Staples feels there is little she can say about this. “At no point, do I see myself as someone who can persuade people who may have ancestors or grandparents who have a history of being experimented on,” she said.

Santana-Ramirez agrees that acknowledging the horrific experiences that black and brown people have had with vaccines is important, but it’s not limited to history and continues to this day. “People just don’t really talk about that aspect, they always mention history as the reason why some people are hesitant and it’s not entirely true,” she said. “We still have Black mothers dying at a crazy rate or Latinas being sterilized without their knowledge.” Unfortunately, that is not a conversation many white people wish to have, she believes, finding it easier to refer to the past rather than the present. “Unless this is addressed, I don’t see things going much better the next time we have a [pandemic].”

The best way to counter this, Santana-Ramirez believes, is hiring people who know these communities on a personal level to administer and advocate for the vaccine, making it easier to build trust. “If you’re a person of color getting that jab, I am going to celebrate with you,” she said, “take pictures and ask you to tell your family and community.”

Connor described a similarly happy scene during his vaccine experience, saying, “watching the joy at the clinic was really nice to see after such a depressing era - there were hugs and smiles and laughs.” Soberly, he added that with the staggering figure of 500,000 deaths, with most everyone knowing someone who has been infected, he hoped that the knowledge of what was lost can instill an appreciation for life and each other. “It’s a feeling that we survived and I just want to be grateful for that in my interactions with people,” Connor explained. “Hope it collectively helps us be less asshole-ish.”