MOVING THE NEEDLE

Inside the grassroots campaign that protected San Francisco’s Latino community—and the entire city—from a deadly virus

- JULIA LURIE AND MADDIE OATMAN

ON A CLOUDLESS February day, in the shade of a white tent set up in a small parking lot in San Francisco’s Mission District, Dina Gonzalez rolls up her left sleeve to receive her first dose of the Pfizer vaccine. She had recently recovered from covid; after weeks of fever and sleeping in the basement and praying not to spread the virus to her husband or her kids, which, thank God, she didn’t, this shot could not come soon enough. “I don’t want to go through that again, no, no, no,” she says in Spanish. The 57-year-old runs a home daycare, and she needs to protect herself and the kids as she reopens the business.

On the street outside the tent, vendors sell chicharrones and fruit cups, as a line of people signing up for a vaccination waitlist stretches to the end of the block. Alejandro Valencia, a 58-year-old cook who lives nearby, hopes a vaccine will help him get rehired at the Palace Hotel when it finally reopens. Maira Soto, 42, was told by the owners of the pharmacy where she works to sign up, but the rumors about the vaccine she’s read online make her nervous. Jon Jacobo, who helps run the site, overhears Soto fretting as he walks by. “I felt nervous the first time, too,” Jacobo tells her. “You’re gonna feel fine.”