- Hi, I'm Christy McDonald and here's what's coming up this week on One Detroit.

Inside dining is back at restaurants, but the struggle to come back from the shutdown is real for many places.

We head to downtown Clawson in our series of One City Under a Pandemic.

Plus will the policies toward the Great Lakes change now that there is a new president, a Great Lakes Now report.

Then everything you need to know about the COVID vaccine: effectiveness, safety, and side effects.

And then the words we should be banning from our vocab in 2021.

It's all ahead on One Detroit.

- From Delta faucets to Behr paint, MASCO Corporation is proud to deliver products that enhance the way consumers all over the world experience and enjoy their living spaces.

MASCO, serving Michigan communities since 1929.

- Support for this program provided by the Cynthia and Edsel Ford Fund for Journalism at Detroit public TV; the Kresge Foundation; Community Foundation for Southeast Michigan; Triple A.

- The DTE Foundation is a proud sponsor of Detroit Public TV.

Among the state's largest foundations committed to Michigan-focused giving, we support organizations that are doing exceptional work in our state.

Visit DTEfoundation.com to learn more.

- Business Leaders for Michigan, dedicated to making Michigan a top 10 state for jobs, personal income, and a healthy economy; Nissan Foundation; Ally; and viewers like you.

(upbeat techno music) - Hi there and welcome to One Detroit, I'm Christy McDonald.

So glad that you're with me.

We have a lot coming up on the show for you this week.

We head back to Clawson to see how they've adapted in our ongoing series of One City Under a Pandemic.

Indoor dining is now allowed at low levels but the year-long struggle to maintain business is real.

We'll have the story for you just ahead.

Then the Biden administration hasn't wasted time making policy changes.

Great Lakes Activists are wondering if support for restoration projects and more to protect the lakes will be there.

It's a Great Lakes Now special report.

Then all we need to know about the COVID vaccine from Beaumont Infectious Disease Specialist, Dr. Nick Gilpin.

And then Will Glover gives us the list of words we should banish from our vocab in 2021.

It's a good one.

Indoor dining started on February 1st, here in Michigan but only 25% capacity.

We've been tracking the effects of COVID on one small city in Oakland County starting this summer.

Clawson was on the upswing when the virus hit, but in the next part of our series called One City Under a Pandemic, One Detroit's Bill Kubota and Chris Jordan, take a look at how things are going now since the restrictions in November.

- Right now, Congress is maybe putting together a stimulus package.

Who knows if something will come out of it to help things out.

Right now we're two weeks into December and we're still on a carry-out only.

We're 56% down from where we were last year.

- Well I guess we're all waiting to see what happens on Friday.

Whether or not this, this shutdown and I'll call it a shutdown, because it is for restaurants, if it continues or not, or if it's going to be lifted.

- Chris, we're back at it again, another look at Clawson.

You live there, I used to.

We wanted to see how that small city is fairing in the midst of the pandemic.

- Yes, and in the midst of another shutdown that hit just as the holiday season was ramping up.

Bottom line, for the businesses we talked to, some doing okay, some doing not so good, and some surprising new opportunities that have popped up during the pandemic.

- Christmas in Clawson, the trees, carolers, as festive as can be during a pandemic.

- How did it go for you there?

- You know, it went all right.

It was not as busy as it usually is.

People came in and came out.

No lingering, no coffee serving, no cookie eating, no hugging and kissing.

But we had a decent Christmas.

All things given, you know, we made it through the year and we're ready for another one.

- We had a lot of people I'd never seen before that were like "I want to 100% support local," and not just us but just all of their shopping.

They were saying they were trying to do it with local businesses.

- You know, Christmas is never our biggest season.

I would say it was really at par for where we usually are.

- Vicki Stoddard runs the Hips Resale Boutique.

- And we're really dedicating our time to building a better presence online.

So a lot of our time is spent taking pictures.

So here we are walking through the store.

- Stoddard had to close her changing rooms.

- It is almost showtime.

I got my right-hand mans here.

I got Jen.

- Hello, ladies!

- And there's Kelly.

- Hi!

- After the first shutdown, she started selling via weekly Facebook Live events beginning in May, a couple hours, every Thursday at seven.

- The bigger, the better here.

- And it's 20% off.

- And it's 20% off.

We've actually added another live on Mondays.

So now we're doing two lives a week and we're open in-store shopping twice a week.

- When stores are open, shoppers stay six feet apart.

Masking up hasn't been too big a problem for most people.

- No, we had one lady who insisted that what she was doing was masked, and I said, "well, not really."

"Well do you want me to throw up and faint?"

And I was so close to saying, "Kind of."

- Leon and Lulu, like Hips, has found the solution online.

- The bonus for us is this is the year that we finally got our e-commerce up and rolling.

We found the right solutions and something we'd tried to do twice in the past.

We've had a pretty decent first run with a real website.

You can now stay up, midnight, and you can be drinking a glass of wine, sitting in your nightgown shopping online, just as nature intended.

- Meanwhile, Clawson's Warp Nine Comics has found that focusing on in-store selling, rather than online, is their key to success.

- We thought we were going to lose a lot of business to online, which at first that's kind of the way it was going.

- Yeah.

- But I don't think anybody could foresee the USPS kind of failing as much as they did.

- Right.

- So because of that, we saw a lot more in-store shopping than I thought we would.

And we had a lot of people I'd never seen before that were like, "I want a 100% support local," and not just us, but just all of their shopping.

They were saying they were trying to do it with local businesses.

- Dan Softens said that Warp Nine did better this past December than they did the year before with strong sales in trade paperbacks.

- We were just hoping to hold our own, you know, we were, that was the goal, was just try to hold our own, because we've already lost a ton of money this year.

- The second shut down was much harder at first to I'd say mentally and emotionally deal with, and it took me a good two, three weeks to kind of get into my groove.

- As Zeoli's Modern Italian perfects it's carry-out menu, owner Scott Brown has boxed lunch orders to fill.

- At this point it's just about paying the bills.

- The lunches for frontline medical workers paid for by a program that began last spring.

Zeoli's did well last summer after the first shut down lifted, then the COVID numbers rose.

By flaw, the ride was over.

- Yeah, we had 50% capacity and the ability to seat outdoors but we had no one coming in.

You know, people were making that choice on their own.

- Meanwhile, across the street, there's Pumachug, a restaurant so new that they missed out on the first wave of state and federal assistance, having just opened their doors in the summer.

But now they are featuring a greenhouse courtesy of Oakland County, one way to allow people to sit down and eat outdoors.

- The city plans to distribute more greenhouses soon.

Limited to parties of six, presumably family members and very close acquaintances.

To dine out in Metro Detroit, it's sitting outside or in greenhouses, igloos, or tents.

Are those effective?

Are those safe?

Well, what's the general take on that?

- I think the jury is still out on whether those are effective or safe.

The state has some really kind of guidelines that I would say surprised restaurant owners when the most recent shutdown was announced in November.

- The tents have to be open on three sides - And enclosed tent is kind of like an indoor dining room in a lot of ways.

- For Pumachug, the greenhouse brings customers but nowhere near enough.

- I would say, conservatively, we're losing $10,000 a month.

- Despite everything that we've done to push carry out, we can't survive on food volume alone.

- But how long would you be able to stay in business?

- I think not receiving any government funding, not much longer, to be honest.

I'm really hoping that they open things back up on the 15th, this Friday.

If they don't and we're unsuccessful getting any government funding... - It's not worth staying open.

- I don't know how much longer we can make it.

- As restaurants fight for survival, expect more ideas to expand their carry out market.

- Another thing that I've seen recently pop up more is restaurant subscriptions.

So there are a few restaurants in Detroit right now that are sort of piloting these subscription services.

- Subscription dining, that's restaurants trying to find a more consistent cash flow.

- Meanwhile, Clawson's Three Cats Restaurant has a concept, though not a subscription, to let you travel the world without leaving your house.

Owner, Mary Liz Curtin calls it Three Cats, We'll Taste You There.

Sample regional menus from around the world, paired with recommended music and movie playlists.

- Bonjour, mes amis!

- And you can even get your virtual passport stamped.

- It's something that you could do with your friends.

You could do a Facebook watch party, watch the same movie together.

You could have dinner in your house, I could have it in mine, and we can all connect.

- Toast to the gift.

- First stop, France.

And then on to California and Poland.

- Every business I have spoken to, whether it's in Clawson or anywhere else, has discovered as we have things that we can do better, ways we can change our businesses to get through this time.

All of which will have a positive impact later.

- For our previous stories on Clawson and our daily COVID-19 coverage, just head to our website at OneDetroitPBS.org.

President Biden's administration is bringing policy changes from immigration, to minimum wage, to stimulus checks, and much more.

And in our Great Lakes Now report, there could be some changes when it comes to funding projects around the Great Lakes.

- The Great Lakes Restoration Initiative, or GLRI, was created to protect and restore the largest system of fresh surface water in the world.

- Really over about five to six years there was a great deal of effort to convince Washington that the Great Lakes are a national treasure.

President Obama came into office.

He had made it a priority in his campaign, and a bipartisan Congress signed off on the bill to create the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative which went through in 2009.

- Cameron Davis coordinated a Great Lakes interagency task force of 11 federal departments under the GLRI, try to address five focus areas: toxic substances and areas of concern, invasive species, non-point source pollution impact on near shore health, habitats and species, and foundations for future restoration actions.

- So there are things like trying to block invasive species, keep invasive species out of the Great Lakes like Asian Carp, trying to clean up toxic hotspots, ease our working harbors and rivers around the Great Lakes, that have seen what we call legacy pollutants, be discharged over time into those waterways.

Trying to reduce polluted runoff that creates harmful or toxic algae, like the kind we've seen around Lake Erie is a real priority.

Rebuilding habitat is a priority, and also working to help educate the public and make sure that climate change does not undo the important work that's being done right now to restore the Great Lakes.

- Since 2010 GLRI federal agencies have invested over $2.7 billion in more than 5,400 projects across all eight Great Lakes States.

According to the EPA, of the 31 US sites that were originally listed as areas of concern, 15 have been de-listed, or have achieved an All Management Actions Complete status.

- Actually I think we're going to wind up finishing the job of these cleanups really in the next, in the next 10 to 20 years.

There are many of us who thought that we may never see that day.

- Funds to support the GLRI are appropriated to the Environmental Protection Agency which provides funding for restoration projects.

The GLRI was originally funded under President Obama at $475 million.

The budget was reduced to $300 million for 2011 and it stayed at about that level ever since.

In 2019, President Trump proposed a budget that would have reduced funding for the program by 90% from $300 million to $30 million.

Congress rejected that proposal, so the cuts never went into effect.

And in March of that year, Trump reversed direction during a speech at a rally in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

- I support the Great Lakes, always have.

They're beautiful.

They're big, very deep.

Record deepness, right?

And I'm going to get, in honor of my friends, full funding of $300 million for the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative.

(crowd cheering) - Dr. Alan Steinman is a member of the Great Lakes Advisory Board that provides advice and recommendations to the EPA on GLRI projects.

- With the latest appropriations, it's going up to $475 million a year.

So in $25 million chunks, it's going to be increased with each year, assuming that Congress actually appropriates that money each year.

So that's a really significant increase.

- Aside from the environmental impacts, the GLRI's effect on the region's economy is significant.

- It's been shown through a number of economic studies.

For every dollar you invest in restoration, large-scale ecosystem restoration, there's a return on that investment of somewhere between three to one, to six to one.

And so it makes good economic sense to restore these systems beyond just the spiritual, and recreational, and human health aspects associated with this.

- Restoring Great Lakes is not just the work of a lifetime, it's the work of a hundred generations.

Nobody else in the world has Great Lakes like these, nobody.

We have them, they're ours, we like to share them, but with that privilege comes the responsibility to keep them healthy so that we in return can keep ourselves healthy.

- For more of our reports on the Great Lakes, just head to GreatLakesNow.org.

Turning now to the COVID vaccine.

As more doses are released and more people get vaccinated, We wanted to get a better idea of how effective the vaccine is, the side effects, and how long we'll still all be wearing masks.

Here's Beaumont Infectious Disease Specialist, Dr. Nick Gilpin.

(upbeat techno music) - One of my roles here is to be an ambassador for our healthcare workers and to show them that I believe this is a safe and effective vaccine, and I'm going to take it, and so you should too.

It's just like every other shot I've ever gotten.

(upbeat techno music) Something that I want people to understand is that quick does not mean bad in medicine.

The fact that we were able to, as a society, as a manufacturing industry, laser focus ourselves on manufacturing vaccines, very transparently.

They were, you know, the doors were wide open to showing us their data throughout this process.

We could look over their shoulders, the shoulders of the scientists that were manufacturing the vaccine, and independently review this data.

During the summer they were doing, of course, their phase one, phase two, and phase three clinical trials.

Phase one trials, is it safe?

Phase two, does it work?

And phase three, sort of ongoing monitoring of the vaccine effectiveness.

(upbeat techno music) Pfizer and Moderna are both extremely safe and effective.

That's the good news.

They're both around 95% effective.

They both are very similar in terms of their side effect profiles, meaning very good, very low risk of any serious side effects.

The key differences between these two vaccines really are less about the vaccine itself, and more about the distribution and the storage of the vaccine.

From the perspective of the consumer, there's really not any difference.

(upbeat techno music) The risk of many serious side effects is below 5%, which is very good.

Most common is sore arm, low grade fever, chills, fatigue body aches, of which we're not seeing a lot.

If you do get those side effects you can certainly take Tylenol or Motrin.

You shouldn't be afraid to take anything like that.

It's not going to blunt the effect of the vaccine.

We have been encouraging people if they're concerned about side effects, or if they have a history of having exuberant reactions to vaccines, to schedule the vaccine on a day when you know that the next day you'll have some time to recover.

(upbeat techno music) You really should not pick and mix.

You know, "I want to get Moderna one and Pfizer two," or something else one, and something else two.

It really should be the same and the same.

Three weeks apart for the Pfizer vaccine, four weeks apart for the Moderna vaccine.

My advice to people who are getting their vaccines scheduled is don't necessarily think about when you're going to get the first dose.

Think about when you're going to get the second dose.

Be mindful when you're scheduling that you're going to be available to get that second shot, whenever it may be.

(upbeat techno music) After about seven days after the first dose, you'll have around 50% protection, that's pretty good.

It's not enough, but it's a pretty good start.

Then you'll get your second dose, whether it's three weeks or four weeks, depending which vaccine you get.

Then fast forward another seven to 10 days, then you'll have the full protection on board, which for both of these vaccines is around 95% effectiveness.

(upbeat techno music) We believe, and I've heard the vaccine manufacturers say, they anticipate that immunity from these vaccines will probably last more than two years, and possibly as long as five years.

That's preliminary, and again, we have a lot more to learn in this space, but as of right now, it doesn't look like this is going to need to be an annual vaccine like the flu shot is.

You actually seem to get stronger immunity from the vaccine than you get from the infection itself.

So even if you would have gotten COVID before, you should still be thinking about getting the vaccine because it's going to give you longer lasting protection than the infection would.

(upbeat techno music) So we know that the vaccine is extremely effective at protecting you from getting COVID disease.

But there's the unanswered question of does the vaccine prevent COVID transmission?

Think about it like this.

Say that someone comes along and they cough or sneeze in my face.

I will not get sick from COVID myself, because I'm vaccinated, but there's still a potential for transmission.

So what does that practically mean?

What it means is I want you to get vaccinated, but after you get vaccinated, that's not a free pass to then rip off your mask and go on about life as we knew it.

We're still going to have to be diligent about doing all the things, wearing masks, social distancing, hand-washing, at least for the foreseeable future.

I can tell you scientists are working on this right now to try to answer that very question of does the vaccine not only stop disease, does it also stop transmission?

So stay tuned.

(upbeat techno music) I've heard numbers floated around in the 70 to 80% range.

That's what we consider to be herd immunity.

That means that people who are unable to get vaccinated for one reason or another, we want those people to still have the benefits of protection.

So really 70% is that magic number we want to see.

It's difficult for this country to get 70% of anything.

So we're going to have a lot of work to do.

We suspect that's going to take the better part of 2021.

(upbeat techno music) We're trying to start with healthcare, move to other critical infrastructure workers, into people that are over age 65.

That's where we are right now.

And then once we've satisfied that, then open season, anybody can get it.

It's unfortunate that we don't have enough supply to meet demand, but with time and with a little bit more infrastructure, and with hopefully a little bit help from our friends at the state and federal government, I'm optimistic that by spring/summer we'll be able to get a lot of people vaccinated and that's our goal.

- And finally, it's a new year.

So we should promptly ban some words that were really overused last year, right?

Will Glover has more.

- Since 1976 Lake Superior State University has compiled a list of words that, as they put it, are overworked, redundant, oxymoronic, or cliched.

So let's flatten the curve of words and see what our new normal will be.

Coming in at number 10 is, "I know, right?"

A nonsensical phrase where you assert and question whether you do indeed know.

Number nine, "sus."

Short for suspicious from the game Among Us, it's not part of my vocabulary but I have a feeling this one might be among us for a while.

Number eight, "Karen."

A moniker given to white women, exhibiting racist behavior.

Some say the term has become misogynistic but to all the innocent Karens in the world, take solace in the fact that we're not forced to wear name tags.

I'm sure seven, six, five, and four are all words and phrases that we can definitely let go of, which are, "Unprecedented."

- Unprecedented times... - Unprecedented times... - Unprecedented times... - This unprecedented moment... - "Pivot."

- The pandemic is putting pressure on companies to pivot their business model.

- "In these uncertain times."

- During these uncertain times... - During these uncertain times... - ...and uncertain times... - ...in uncertain times... - Uncertain times... - And, "in an abundance of caution."

As a media professional, I feel attacked, but I understand.

So in these uncertain times, I'll do the unprecedented and pivot to the next phrase, with an abundance of caution.

Number three, "we're all in this together."

- ...together.

- ...together.

- ...together.

- ...together.

- ...together.

- ...together.

- A phrase that was wiped away as soon as the toilet paper went out of stock.

Number two, social distancing.

I'm not sure how we get rid of this one but I'd rather be socially distant than unsociably close.

Coming in at number one is COVID-19, Coronavirus, the 'Rona.

And although it would be amazing to watch this word slip back into the obscurity of medical vocabulary, until then don't forget to stay safe, stay healthy, and wear your mask.

- Nice job, Will.

Does it seem like we're still living in unprecedented times?

Maybe that phrase is going to hang on a little longer.

That's going to do it for me.

Check us out at OneDetroitPBS.org, and I'll see you next time for One Detroit.

Take care.

(upbeat techno music) - You can find more at OneDetroitPBS.org or subscribe to our social media channels and sign up for our One Detroit newsletter.

(upbeat techno music) - From Delta faucets to Behr paint, MASCO Corporation is proud to deliver products that enhance the way consumers all over the world experience and enjoy their living spaces.

MASCO, serving Michigan communities since 1929.

- Support for this program provided by the Cynthia and Edsel Ford Fund for Journalism at Detroit Public TV; the Kresge Foundation; Community Foundation for Southeast Michigan; Triple A.

- The DTE foundation is a proud sponsor of Detroit Public TV.

Among the state's largest foundations committed to Michigan-focused giving, we support organizations that are doing exceptional work in our state.

Visit DTEfoundation.com to learn more.

- Business Leaders for Michigan dedicated to making Michigan a top 10 state for jobs, personal income, and a healthy economy.

Nissan Foundation, Ally, and viewers like you.

(upbeat piano music)