(bright upbeat music) - [Narrator] This week on "Arizona Illustrated," all about the vaccines.

- I'm deeply proud of what this got you gonna end this pandemic, right?

It's science, it's immunology, it's virology, it's vaccinology.

And I see it coming, I really do.

- [Narrator] The talk.

- It's part of driving.

It's just part of driving while Black.

- [Narrator] A muralist on murals.

- This is our way of telling our own story and telling our own messages and our own lived experiences.

- [Narrator] And all the tea in China is right here in Tucson.

- What we provide is not just tea, but we provided a cultural experience for people.

(bright upbeat music) - Welcome to "Arizona Illustrated."

I'm Tom McNamara.

One week ago, it was snowing.

Today, it's about 79 degrees and partly cloudy.

And next week, you never know.

We do know spring is coming and with it some more good hiking weather.

And we're here at the Finger Rock Trail in the Santa Catalina Mountains, North of Tucson.

Whether you brave the ruggedly beautiful trail behind me or the trek up Tumamoc Hill, just West of Downtown, the many trails in Catalina State Park, East of Oro Valley or the thick Ponderosa pines, oaks, ferns of the old Baldy Trail on Mount Wrights in South of town, there are seemingly endless opportunities to get out and experience nature here in Southern Arizona.

Just remember to bring sunscreen and more water than you think you'll need.

As the ACPM crew and I continue to mask up when appropriate and keep a distance to protect ourselves and others, as the Corona virus remains a worldwide concern, here's an update on the situation in Arizona.

- [Narrator] The seven day rolling average of confirmed new cases and testing positivity in Arizona both dropped over the past two weeks.

However, Arizona still has the 1/3 worst COVID-19 diagnosis rate in the US.

To-date, over 700,000 doses of the COVID-19 vaccine have gone into the arms of Arizonans.

The state says it's wrapping up its role in a program to make vaccinations possible at as many as 800 pharmacies statewide.

For more information regarding vaccinations, use the vaccine finder tool @azdhs.gov.

(gentle music) - The effort to vaccinate Arizonans is now over a month old yet questions and concerns over the vaccine remain.

Deepta Bhattacharya is an associate professor in the University of Arizona's Department of Immunobiology, and his lab is a leader in researching the safety, efficacy and role that the vaccines will play in getting us past the pandemic.

(gentle music) - Look as a scientist, I'm not just sitting back dispassionately advising people to get the vaccines that I wouldn't be willing to get myself.

We're all in the middle of this pandemic.

And we all want out of it.

I have seen all the data and if there were any concerns, believe me, I would not be taking that vaccine.

But after having seen the data, if I could be first in line, I absolutely would.

My name is Deepta Bhattacharya.

I'm an associate professor in the Department of Immunobiology here at the University of Arizona, college of medicine.

My lab has been long interested in understanding antibody responses and immune responses.

Now we're transitioning to understanding how those immune responses work after the vaccine.

Vaccines are really one of the, if not maybe the most important biomedical breakthrough of mankind.

I mean, if you think about the number of lives that it saved, it's really astronomical.

In general, what a vaccine is trying to do is to get your body to start an immune response that is similar to what would happen if you got an infected, but without getting you sick.

The first ones that we're seeing and the ones that are extraordinarily effective right now are called mRNA vaccines.

The virus is what's called an RNA virus, so that when it infects your cells, it deposits a bunch of nucleic acids or genome called ribonucleic acids.

That's how the virus encodes it's proteins.

It makes more copies of itself.

And then it starts to infect other cells.

The mRNA vaccines are basically taking one very tiny part of what the virus would be making anyway, and the most important part for the immune system to recognize and block virus infection.

So it's sort of the perfect world because it's mimicking the key important parts of the virus, but it's only one part of it, so you can't make more virus.

So it's just focusing that immune response on exactly what you want.

So the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, I think first off the one thing that we learned from these trials is that they're extraordinarily efficacious.

They reduce the risk of disease by about 95% relative to those who hadn't been vaccinated.

So that's outstanding.

I mean, that's right up there with some of the best vaccines that we have.

I think some people are wondering how is it that we managed to get these vaccines out so quickly?

And is it something we need to be worried about?

One of the things that really allowed the rapid development of these vaccines was decades of basic research and to understanding how corona viruses work.

The clinical trials and the phases are the same as any other vaccine trial.

That part hasn't been accelerated really at all, except by the fact that the pandemic is raging.

And so we've got a much better chance to see whether the vaccine is working and protecting people or not.

So I think that there really isn't much concern at all in terms of how fast these vaccines were developed because it's not the important parts that were accelerated.

(gentle music) The person I was really worried about is my father who is old and he has asthma and that's the concern.

Just this morning, he got his first dose of Moderna, so I am ecstatic.

Internally, it gives me a sense of relief knowing that the likelihood that my father would be at great risk of severe disease is in all likelihood going to be protected.

I'm deeply proud of what has got you gonna end this pandemic, right?

It's science, it's immunology, it's virology, it's vaccinology.

And I see it coming, I really do.

I mean, I think my wife and I are, with the efficacy of these vaccines, we're getting ready.

We're planning our summer travel as is right now.

So I think things are gonna get better sooner rather than later.

- [Narrator] For more information on the corona virus, including answers to frequently asked questions about COVID-19 vaccines, visit cdc.gov.

- What comes to mind when you hear about parents sitting down with their child for the talk?

Well, the answer may be different than you think when it comes to African-American parents.

We sat down with some Black parents in Tucson who shared their thoughts about the talk they had with their kids to prepare them for interactions with the police.

(upbeat music) - The talk to me is the conversation that we have with our boys, particularly Black boys about how to have an interactions with the police.

- They're to understand that the police aren't necessarily there to protect and serve them, but perhaps there to profile them, perhaps there to just make judgments about what they may be doing even if they're not doing anything.

- Further explaining how it's important for them to just get home with us.

And so we want them to understand how they should behave and understand that it's a pervasive issue in our society today that it's quite possible that that interaction could go very wrong.

- It also includes instructions as to what you should do when you're stop.

- Put your hands, understand, make sure the lights are on.

- Don't do anything without police permission.

Ask before you get your registration.

Ask for a supervisor if you feel like things are starting to escalate.

- There is a line of questioning that goes too far.

If they feel uncomfortable with those questions, they need to say, "You know what?

"I want my parents to be in the room."

- It's part of driving.

It's just part of driving while Black.

And you're just, again, it's literally like just how you explain how to parallel park, you explain this is what happens when you get stopped.

(gentle music) - To have that talk with my sons makes me feel, it saddens me.

I feel like it's unfair that we have to live like these totally different lives even though everyone wants to say all lives matter and we're all human beings, clearly there are differences.

And so it is, it feels like it's very unfair that I have to have these conversations with my boys so that they can, so they can live and survive.

- People are viewed completely different when their color is not White, unfortunately.

I tend to think that I have tremendous White privilege, being a Latino of lighter skinned that I don't have to worry about getting pulled over.

However, when I was younger, running with kids who were all Brown or Black, we had that fear.

- Our kids have come up during a generation where you see bumper stickers that say question everything.

And that's the philosophy.

And it seems to be the climate of the day where people challenge everything and question everything.

Well, that's okay for other people, but it's not okay for Black people.

You don't question and challenge the police officers like everybody else can.

- My boys will be first and foremost seen as either a threat or a potential threat first before anything else.

- Just growing up in California in Los Angeles area, I have been stopped with another Black male in the car, stopped driving perfectly.

Normally, I have to sit on the side of the road, have my car stripped and just looking for drugs and things that obviously weren't there, but it's been a real experience for me.

So that talk is necessary.

And because I know from personal experience that this is what happens.

- In Oakland, the police, they were very much prevalent, pretty much in every neighborhood, and the interactions I would witness were never positive.

It wasn't where I would see a police officer coming to engage us as kids just to be friendly.

It was always aggression.

It frustrated me.

It frustrated me because I understood that I was being stopped because I was Black.

And I was in that area.

I knew what the game was.

I knew it, but of course I did what I was taught to do.

I was respectful and answer the questions and I didn't smart off to the police officers but, and it's also frightening, let me add that.

We're told that police officers do things because they're afraid, I don't know if they understand that we're afraid too, because we understand what can happen.

- That fear still lives within me even though I'm 43 years old, educated, have my own family.

It's still within me.

- [George] Please instructor.

Please, please, I can't breath.

Please man.

- What I think about the George Floyd incident was surprisingly how much denial that we live in America.

- With the death of George Floyd, we definitely revisited the conversations and on how to interact with the police.

It was like, here we go again.

And you guys, we really have to be careful.

And it really made me see that it could happen at any time to anyone.

- One of the things that we said to our children is that this isn't the first time.

This is an issue that consistently comes to the forefront in our society.

And it's important that they are aware and that George Floyd is them.

They could be George Floyd.

- And the truth is, is that until we are, until we are willing to admit that there is a problem, we will never fix that problem.

- I mean, we've seen all of these Marquis progress, but we're still doing the same thing as Black people that our great, great, great grandparents did.

We're still telling them say yes, sir.

And no, sir, when you encounter a cop, just like our ancestors said, "Say yes, samassa, say no, samassa."

I mean, we have pride, not progress beyond having to do special things to survive as a people.

And that's something we need to understand in both Black and White society that Black people are still in danger, just like our ancestors were in danger.

- So it kind of breaks my heart to know that he's just gonna be judged regardless of how good he behaves.

I think on some level, he even knows that.

And there's nothing that I can can do about that, not now and not as he grows into adulthood.

So it just, it saddens me.

(gentle music) - Some of the things I tell my sons just to just to stay uplifted and to be positive is to know when you come home, you are safe and you are loved.

- So I want them to know that it's a challenge, but the world still is open for them.

They could achieve whatever they wanna achieve.

We just have to make sure that they navigate this world safely and smart.

- The environment between the police and the community here in Arizona, in Tucson Arizona is the best that I've experienced.

- I've been stopped in the car with my husband and the interactions have always been positive.

I've just never had a negative experience.

So I just don't have any reason to believe here that there would be a issue.

- I've interacted with the Police Department intimately.

I'm a part of the chief's community advisory board.

- I feel the support of even moms in my community asking me, "What can I do?

"How do you think we can work towards change?"

They're actually verbalizing that to me.

And that makes me so happy.

That gives me so much hope.

- Mention murals to a Tucson, and most would probably assume you're referring to a recent phenomenon.

However, as artist, Alfonso Chavez is about to reveal, murals in the Southwest have a long and significant history.

- I don't even know the first time that I noticed it.

I mean, it's such a prominent thing in the community and I feel like I've been around it so long.

It's just like part of the experience.

This piece was painted by Martin Moreno.

This itself was a community project that was done with a lot of local youth, painted at sometime in the '80s.

And then it was repainted in 2011.

My name is Alfonso Chavez.

I go by Fonz520, I'm a local artist, muralist, community organizer, the imagery of industrialization.

But at the same time, it's coming from, quetzalcoatl which represents knowledge.

And it's also like a very prominent part of our pre-colonial history.

It's just a huge fusion of everything that makes Tucson what it is, especially here in Bario Viejo.

So this is another original from Martin Moreno, same artist that painted the one that we saw at the Pilita Center, except this isn't the one that we're here to see today.

This is a mural that we're here to see.

This was originally painted by David Tineo as well as his collective and some community folks and restored by myself and a few of my good friends.

We included around 15 community youth specifically from this area.

The whole reason why the out real community center even exists is through a series of protests that took place in West Tucson.

There was no sidewalks in that area.

There were no parks.

There was no place for community to gather.

This is relevant to the petroglyphs and the hieroglyphs.

We've always told our stories through writing on walls.

David Tineo is one of those iconic figures that I grew up seeing.

When he reached out to me, it's a really humbling experience to be recognized by someone that you look up to like that.

(upbeat music) This is a mural that's painted by Jonny Bubonik.

He uses vibrant colors and he uses neon paint.

And he's an aerosol artist.

First of all, I'm like a huge hip-hop head.

And so I think it's cool that a piece like this exists in Tucson Andre 3000 actually started a clothing brand based off of these messages.

And all of the proceeds went to BLM.

The murals that we saw have a lot to do with like the native Chicano community here in Tucson.

And this is more for like the Black community.

And so you're getting all these modern twists and different cultural implications that are telling the story of what's going on right now.

A lot of the stories that our murals tell are what are considered counter narratives to the dominant, which we often hear.

This is our way of telling our own story and telling our own messages and our own lived experiences.

(upbeat music) - The year of the rat is almost over and the year of the ox, beckons.

Beginning, February 12th, friends and family in China and other countries will gather to celebrate the new year.

Here in Tucson, a unique gift shop celebrates another Chinese tradition, the making and preparing of high quality tea.

(calm zen music) - We specialize in Chinese tea.

We're as much interested in research as we are in tea.

In the tea industry, there just isn't any access to information about tea, don't know where it comes from or who made it, it's all very opaque.

And one of the things that I was particularly moved by in the beginning was the tea makers.

The tea makers in China, they dedicated their life to making better and better tea every year.

And we wanted to promote the people that were making our tea rather than keeping them secret.

(car racing) - We also want our customers have a connection with those tea masters.

So we had the same idea, want to promote high end tea to the world.

Even in China, high-end tea is still very rare.

I have to travel to different regions to see the tea from the tea master or different group of people, how they making the tea.

- Seven Cups is really a unique shop to do it's business in is direct trade sort of model.

This is something that Austin and Zhuping started just because they really didn't know any other way.

This is before there was a word for direct trade.

- I got the interest in the early '90s.

I made a friend who was a graduate student, he was from China.

And he gave me some really, I guess average Chinese green tea, which I thought was spectacular.

And then I was drawn to the question of why wasn't I able to buy it in the United States considering that I could go to the Tucson Mall and not find anything made in America?

So I was interested in that problem.

- Austin was one of the early forerunners to show up to China and start buying tea.

And so suddenly to have this six foot tall White American guy showing up asking, saying, "Hey, I hear you make the best tea.

"Can you sell me the best tea?"

Was something that made an impression - I met Zhuping after I started my business.

She was managing the tea house in Guangzhou.

I did some business with her employers and things evolved.

And she came over to visit and she came over to sit in on the trade show that I was doing in Anaheim.

And she just stayed.

(Austin laughing) - So this year was oolong tea, we bought, this is our best.

- For Zhuping in particular, her role in the industry really has been on the Chinese side and into the the relationships with producers and different governing organizations at the Chinese industry.

- So we try our best to make the tea house very soothing, very calming with setting a traditional way which is with a lots of arts.

I also tell them the tea, how to making the tea or doing the tea ceremony for many of my customers.

So those kind of influence, little by little make them fel the tea house is very unique place for that.

- Here at the Tea house, the atmosphere when there was no pandemic was beautiful and it's still a beautiful space, but to feel all of the people in here, drinking tea, you'd be sitting at the table and someone would come by and ask for your order and explain.

If you couldn't choose a tea, they would explain the benefits of different teas or how they would taste.

- So few people in the country who are willing to put expensive, very high quality teas out there with the respect for their customer and say, "They're gonna get it.

"They're going to understand this."

And not only they're gonna do this, but they're gonna do it in Tucson, Arizona.

And it's not San Francisco, not in New York.

- Why tea in Tucson?

It really doesn't make too much sense to sell a hot beverage in a place the temperature is over a 100 degrees, six months of the year.

And half the year, half the population leaves and tourists stop coming.

So why even do tea in Tucson?

Well, first of all, it's because it's where I live.

And intuitively it doesn't make much sense, unless you understand Southwestern people.

Southwestern people are, let's just say thirsty for culture.

And what we provide is not just tea, but we provide a cultural experience for people.

- I felt very sad for the pandemic time.

Everybody have hard time and my tea house was so many customers, they called home.

They miss the teahouse.

I missed them.

- Wow, the pandemic had a pretty, gave us quite a gut punch.

So we had to close down for service.

However, we've kept going because our shop is still open.

And because a lot of local people have bought tea from us online.

So even though we don't get to see the community in face-to-face, they're still supporting our business.

And we'll be in business next year.

- Seven Cups Tea House is not currently offering tea ceremonies or table service in order to protect staff and customers, but you can still learn more about Chinese tea, tea makers and explore the teas available in Tucson by visiting their website, sevencups.com.

- [Narrator] Watch "Arizona Illustrated" stories on demand on our website azpm.org/ArizonaIllustrated.

Catch up on past episodes, rewatch your favorites or even view some stories before they broadcast.

- Thank you for joining us here on "Arizona Illustrated."

I'm Tom McNamara.

See you next week.

(upbeat music)