(light music) - It's been just over a year since the first case of COVID-19 was detected in Arizona, one year since a Maricopa County man in his 50s became the first Arizonan to die from the disease.

One year into the coronavirus pandemic, over 16,000 of our friends, neighbors, and family members have succumbed to the virus in Arizona alone.

(somber music) The pandemic has touched everyone in the world.

And now at a time when we just might fathom an end to it, we look back on a year of sorrow and loss, but also an inspirational human ingenuity and that desire for connection, even when we're apart.

Today we share a year of stories from the perspective of those who created them.

This week on Arizona Illustrated, COVID-19 one year.

(somber music) Welcome to a special episode of Arizona Illustrated.

I'm Tom McNamara.

Before we look back on a year like no other, we must acknowledge the pandemic is far from over and that virus continues to infect and kill.

So the AZPM crew and I continue to wear masks, keep a safe distance, and take other measures to help keep ourselves well and those around us safe.

Here is an update.

Over the past two months, the number of new cases, new deaths, test results, and testing positivity have all declined from the record-setting numbers recorded in January.

The total number of people that have received a vaccine has also increased over the past two months with the arrival of the single dose Johnson & Johnson shot and a gradual increase in those who are eligible.

Well over two and a half million Arizonans have received at least their first injection.

For more information regarding vaccinations, visit azdhs.gov.

(gentle music) We are now one year into the pandemic, and it's hard to even remember what the world was like in March of 2020, when the threat of the virus became evident and the world began to change.

- I remember the first weekend after the shutdown, I went on a long walk.

It really was like an episode of "The Twilight Zone."

It was so bizarre seeing how empty the streets were, and I'd never seen Tucson like that.

And there was this quiet that was just really eerie and it was striking how empty things were.

- I think the moment that it really hit home for me that this was going to be something different and things were more serious than I realized was when I went to the grocery store and there were just thousands of people there and the line was around the aisles.

Also, the shelves were bare.

And that was a scary moment.

- Schools were sending students and teachers home.

Thousands of people were losing their jobs and businesses were closing.

Other organizations like Arizona Public Media sent their staff to work from home.

On March 18th, Tucson's mayor declared a local state of emergency directing restaurants, bars, gymnasiums, anywhere where people congregate, to close.

- I remember the next day I came in, I got a computer from work and I brought it home.

I sat it on my kitchen table and I thought this would maybe be a couple of weeks.

And it is a year later, and I am still working from my kitchen table right here.

- As the weeks and the months passed and the threat of the virus became more evident, more changes would occur, seemingly indirect, but no less impactful.

A couple of things that come to mind.

Two of our daughters missed the bulk of their senior year in school and their graduations; one from college and one from high school.

And my elderly mother-in-law literally became confined to her apartment.

AZPM producers, reporters, photographers, and editors would slowly figure out how to report on the crisis, during the crisis, and many from home offices.

And when they did go into the field, they began to observe procedures which now seem obvious, like establishing and maintaining a safe distance from each other when we were filming and wearing masks and recording lots and lots of Zoom interviews.

The entire community, the world, was learning how to cope as we went along.

We were also realizing this was not going to go away anytime soon.

And in fact, it was going to get worse.

- We're not even five miles into this marathon, and people are exhausted.

- [Antonio] As leader of our seat, how much enforcement should we really have with these kinds of issues?

- Antonio, I would say that Arizonans have taken physical distancing very seriously.

- Arizona has become a new epicenter for COVID-19.

- [News reporter] Maricopa County, where most Arizonans live, has by far the highest number of cases, deaths, and hospitalizations in the state.

- Producer Cait NiSiomon's first day as Arizona Illustrator's mental health producer was March 1st.

And only two weeks later, she'd be sent to work from home.

One of her first stories focused on a group of frontline healthcare workers providing help such as a safe place to stay, counseling and supplies for people just like them, healthcare workers on the line.

(monitors beeping) - I honestly don't know if I would be able to emotionally handle being a nurse in an ICU unit and having people that you know are dying alone.

That's very hard to deal with on a daily basis, and I think a lot of people take that for granted.

How long do they think that these nurses are gonna be able to continue to do this while putting their own families in danger?

- Healthcare workers have a lot of coping strategies.

And our job on the emotional wellness side is to reinforce those strategies they already know that already worked for them and to encourage them to expand on those so they can go back in day after day to the same job.

- Having a role in understanding the problem and creating a solution builds resilience within a community.

It also builds community bonds, which will make us as a community more resilient in the future for this big, second wave that we're concerned about that'll be coupled with influenza.

And that's just absolutely terrifying.

Not just because of the numbers of beds and numbers of sick people, but we will then have this marathon for a good nine months at that point.

Who's gonna have any gas left in the tank to charge up that health?

if we're not actually minding about our wellness now?

Healthcare workers are already twice as likely to commit suicide than the rest of the population.

It's unacceptable for us not to anticipate the burden this is gonna create on them and their family.

And then what does that mean for our communities?

Just like war, scars, a country, and the population, a psyche of a population, we can try and minimize that.

- Brian Nelson was also a new producer for Arizona Illustrated, having started on April 1st.

He quickly realized that many of the stories he'd be telling were focused on the overwhelming issue of the day, the pandemic.

- So my very first story for the show was of course about the pandemic.

In fact, it was about the antibody tests that were being developed right here at the University of Arizona by researchers such as Dr. Deepta Bhattacharya.

- So our test measures antibodies in the blood.

So it requires a blood draw from a phlebotomist at one of the many sites that we set up around the state.

Antibodies are proteins that are produced by your immune cells that stick the viruses, bacteria, and other parasites and pathogens and prevent them from infecting your cells.

The antibody test, which is the one that we've developed, is mainly a marker of whether or not you've mounted an immune response against the virus.

Those antibodies stick around for a long time after you've been infected, and so it gives you a much broader window to determine how far the virus has spread within your immunity.

- Now, this was at the very beginning of the pandemic, and there was still a lot that we didn't know about the virus.

So, to be safe, I conducted all of my interviews for the story over Zoom.

And Zoom doesn't exactly deliver the best image quality, to say the least.

Having said that, the work that Dr. Bhattacharya and his team were doing was just incredible.

- There were a lot of sleepless nights in the early days when we were trying to develop this antibody test, and that there was an awful lot that was riding on the work of me and my lab.

And what we recognized right away is we had to get this right.

Is our tests going to be accurate enough?

And if we tell someone the wrong thing, what if they go out and they think that they're immune and they ended up getting sick?

And I think those are the things that really kept us up late at night.

But ultimately you have to distance the science from that and then get down into the results and then do everything in your power to make sure that you have the best test out there, and that's really what we did.

So the accuracy and specificity of our test is about 99.9%, which is very good.

The testing capacity that we've developed is one of the largest in the country and possibly the world.

And I think that the knowledge that we gained from this will be really instructive to other communities as they decide how to best control the spread of this disease.

- Okay, I'm gonna point this at your forehead and take your temperature.

- While Tucson's medical community rose to the serious and ongoing challenges of the COVID-19 crisis, its arts community also responded.

- I guess, once everything shut down, it didn't surprise me at all that there was this just massive wave of creative energy.

- Oh my God, it's like a foot-long Sonoran hot dog and its (indistinct) - I really don't think we skipped a beat before there was yoga classes and cooking classes and all sorts of DIY things.

- Just taking lemons and making lemonade, or margaritas, or whatever.

- It was maybe like a week or two before just almost everybody was doing something online.

(bright upbeat music) There's so many working musicians in town and gig musicians in town that seeing the way that they transitioned to online performances was really inspiring.

- We have created a detailed survey for musicians to basically apply for assistance.

People have reported over $90,000 in lost wages due to COVID-19-related cancellations.

- I launched, with the help of Katie Haverly and Hannah Levin, a Tucson musicians relief fund on GoFundMe.

I'm gonna talk to my friends in Birds and Arrows, and we're gonna get them going on their first set of music.

We've been doing a partnership with Startup Tucson this week to give a daily live performances at noon.

(guitar music) - Then there's a lot of bigger cultural institutions that had to just makeup a new reality and adapt.

- We're just getting ready to do a stop action animation of the balcony scene from "Romeo and Juliet" using salt and pepper shakers.

- O, that I were a glove upon that hand that I might touch that cheek!

- Ah me!

- We're using something called volumetric video capture to capture 3D video of actors.

And then we're able to incorporate them into the 3D version of the presidio that we have.

- I'm a father, and being able to use these new media outlets is going to necessarily bring the information to young people in a way that's more digestible, more engaging, more compelling.

- But our goal is to put everything we're gonna do in a street festival online.

All the reasons that that sucked before the pandemic, that was so difficult to be a nonprofit theater group, are all the great advantages we have now being nimble, of being light, of being able to work anywhere.

- Together, we are stronger.

(speaking in a foreign lanuage) - As the summer of 2020 descended upon Southern Arizona and the temperatures began to rise, so did the number of cases and deaths in the state.

At times, Arizona led the world with the highest seven-day average of COVID-19 cases per capita.

And the pandemic would not be the only event to define the year.

- You know, as we all reflect on 2020, there was a lot of factors in the mix, political and social unrest.

- What's his name?

- [Crowd] George Floyd!

- The pandemic.

- [Man] We're just doing what we can to hang on and have the ability to reopen.

- [Man in cap] And then just locally a major forest fire in the Catalina Mountains just felt like 2020.

Of course the mountain's gonna burn.

(suspenseful music) - On the evening of June 5th, lightning struck Bighorn Mountain in the set of Catalina Mountains north of Tucson.

(ominous music) The Bighorn Fire had begun to burn.

Over the next 48 days, the fire raged the entire mountain range burning down into Pima, Finger Rock, Esperero, and Upper Sabino Canyons, at times threatening homes and forcing people to evacuate around Oro Valley and the Catalina foothills.

It continued to grow and spread, burning just below and then around Mount Lemmon.

Through the efforts of nearly 1,000 personnel, thousands of gallons of fire retardant, water, and a little rainfall, the fire was declared 100% contained on July 23rd, 2020.

As the Bighorn flames were extinguished, a deep and life-sustaining tradition was about to begin.

For thousands of years, the Tohono O'odham have lived in the Sonoran Desert.

And for much of that time, they have harvested the bithage, the fruit of the saguaro.

(gentle music) - This is paradise.

This is a beautiful place.

And with the high temperatures, people get real frustrated with that.

But embrace the heat because the saguaro doesn't prosper without the high heat.

The soil shows us about our own resilience.

It shows us how we can survive.

- My experience on that story was that the people there were not distracted by the pandemic.

It felt to me like they were fully immersed in the harvest itself and were finding great joy in that; being together and going through the rituals and the traditions that are part of that.

- [Narrator] Just as my mom taught us, because she was gonna get old one day and she wasn't gonna be able to harvest, she wanted us to know so we could continue and also pick for her and continue to cook the syrup.

You know, one day we'll be elders and we won't be able to pick and there'll be the young ones here to pick for us.

- Creating an Arizona Illustrated story requires people: videographers, editors, producers, writers, but it also requires time in the field with the subjects of your story, something no longer possible when staying at home became necessary to protect one's own safety and that of others.

- I needed to figure out how I would make rich, visually rich, engaging stories, but without being able to spend very much time actually shooting with people.

So I started to conceive stories where there was already a lot of visual material.

Like, for example, I did a story about Deidra Peaches, a filmmaker who lives in Flagstaff.

And we ended up doing the interview over Zoom because it was a time in the pandemic where people really weren't getting together at all.

And so that didn't have the kind of visual richness that our interviews you usually do, but we had this amazing catalog of Deidra's worked.

(light music) - If you're an outsider coming into a community, there's a lot of take, take, take, take, take.

I think, as an indigenous filmmaker, you always think about the people.

(gentle music) By thinking in those terms like that definitely helps to uplift an entire community rather than pushing them down.

- I also started doing a lot of stories that were more related to history.

And so I started to do these stories that relied on archival material, whether they were stills, or video, or film.

So I did a story about Gordon Hirabayashi who refused to be interned in the internment camps during World War II.

And a lot of the material I got came from special collections at the University of Arizona.

I did a story called "Pieces of Time" that relied heavily on still images from the Arizona State Museum.

And I did a story called "Myth and The West" which relied on old film footage from Old Tucson Studios and a lot of old westerns and stills from Cody Young's life, who is the subject of the film.

- For over 50 years, Old Tucson Studio has been an important part of the magic of movie-making.

And at one time or another, almost every major star has walked these historic streets.

- [Narrator] Over 20 live shows are performed in Old Tucson daily, including the most authentic gunfight reenactments anywhere.

(bomb blast) (people cheering) - So I was born into this context and I was raised at Old Tucson.

I was a child actor.

I did jobs at Old Tucson.

So I mean, the Western is something that's just intrinsically part of my character in life.

But as I start to study it, when I come to school and I start to confront ideas of white privilege and the media representing only a specific point of view, and that being a very white point of view.

And I can see how the Western has achieved this sort of huge building block in this attitude.

(guitar music) The West was being mythologized even as it was being enacted.

So the historical West and the mythological West are two very different things.

- This crisis has been especially hard on locally-owned small businesses as some have limited their hours or dramatically changed their business model.

Others have laid off employees or gone out of business for good.

In late 2020, Producer Mitch Riley found a local gym that has managed to navigate the effects of the pandemic.

- They were the first gym in Tucson to close.

And then over time, as more information was coming in about what's doable and what are safe practices, they began to reopen.

And one of the key tenets for their community was community.

- We had to put it to the test.

We couldn't be open and we couldn't do this and we couldn't do that.

And I've understood humility, but I've never felt more humbled in my life than when all those people decided to continue paying and like, "Yeah, we're just gonna keep it open."

And the community carried it.

They have cleaning supplies protocols when they come in, there are protocols when they leave.

We're constantly staying in contact with everybody in regards to wearing masks.

When they're in their set area, eight feet apart, they don't have to wear it when we're doing really hard exercise work.

(hopeful music) We trust that our community is strong.

And it's not a false bravado, it's not a false confidence.

I believe we're gonna be okay.

We gotta go through a little bit right now.

But, yeah, we'll see each other on the other side of this, and one thing or another will happen.

And even if Gym 244 closed, if we were closed for two months and we couldn't manage, that's just something that happened and we'll see each other somewhere else.

(gentle music) - Perhaps no other business has been more impacted by the coronavirus pandemic than restaurants.

Several local favorites have been forced to close their doors, permanently.

And many food service workers have lost their jobs or are just struggling to get by.

- There was not a how-to guide for this pandemic.

Everybody was basically forced to just try to make it up as they go along.

Even though they're all restaurants from place to place to place, they all just had totally different approaches and totally different circumstances.

And people were just trying to make it through.

- My siblings have all had other jobs or have other jobs and come and help.

But this has been my main job.

It would be strange to not be here, not doing this.

- Even if we take a loss right now, it is worth it to ensure that we are still here for who knows how many more years, but hopefully, quite a few more.

(gentle music) - Unfortunately, there've been several restaurants in Tucson that have been institutions who have just decided to close.

And I don't blame them.

It's been really difficult and it's run through my mind a couple of times.

I think we'll make it through if there's not another complete shutdown.

(gentle music) - Just recently, Governor Doug Ducey issued an executive order calling on all schools to reopen in-person learning.

One year ago, most schools in Southern Arizona had shut down in-person learning and transitioned to a mix of online remote instruction.

But by last fall, some, like this charter school in Aro Valley, had transitioned to a mix of kids in the classroom and at home.

(indistinct chatter) - We got back in school in, I believe, it was October 12th.

It was awesome because I'm someone who relies on my friends a lot and I will hang out with them and it's a big mental, like just, yes.

And it was weird just not being able to do that every day.

I think probably one of the biggest changes to the school was having to wear masks around and not being able to take them off.

And it's kind of hard to recognize people.

(gentle music) It's pretty stressful just not being able to know what's gonna happen today and if your teachers are gonna be in school.

Our math teacher hasn't been here for a while 'cause he had symptoms, I'm guessing.

He hasn't been in for like a week, and he wasn't there for the first two weeks of school, in school, that is.

So that's been kind of weird.

- Here at the center for what I'm about-- - You wonder at what point keeping up this level of energy, keeping up this level of worry, is it gonna become unsustainable.

And that's the word that I think of when I think of hybrid learning.

I have kids who, when you mentioned that we might be going back into virtual learning completely, they just want to cry.

And then I have kids who are begging for it.

It's frustrating to watch kids that you know are in pain.

And it could be that school is their social place, maybe they're an only child.

It could be that they are queer and at home they're not out, but at school they are, and they're losing that opportunity to spend their day out and proud.

It could be that maybe nobody is home with them.

I have a lot of really lonely kids looking at me through a computer screen because mom and dad are at work and they're just home with a screen all day long.

- As 2020 came to a close, COVID-19 cases surged to record highs following the holidays.

But, there was hope on the horizon, hope in the form of vaccines.

(hopeful 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.

- Almost a year into the pandemic, I got the chance to sit down again with Dr. Bhattacharya, this time, to talk about the the vaccine rollout.

- [Dr. Bhattacharya] One of the things that really allowed the rapid development of these vaccines was decades of basic research into understanding how coronaviruses 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 in 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.

- It just seemed like everything had changed.

The setup, we weren't talking over Zoom, his demeanor had changed, and it was just so much different from where we were at the very start of this pandemic.

- The person I was really worried about was 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, who would be a great risk of severe disease, is in all likelihood going to need protected.

I'm deeply proud of what its got, you're going to 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.

(gentle music) - So, here we are, year two with the coronavirus in our lives.

And while the vaccines give us hope, it's more important than ever now that we remain vigilant and do everything we can to protect ourselves and others.

Yes, our lives have changed over the past year, but together, we will move forward.

Our creativity, our resilience, our determination to stay connected with each other will keep us moving forward.

And before we go, I'd like to invite you to a special event.

March 30th, Lorraine Rivera, Christopher Conover, Tony Paniagua, will join me in a live, virtual conversation.

And we'll look at how the pandemic has shaped the experience of life here in Southern Arizona.

We'd love for you to join us at azpm.org/oneyearlive.

(gentle guitar music) And thank you for joining us here on Arizona Illustrated.

I'm Tom McNamara, and we'll see you next week.

(gentle instrumental music) (dramatic music)