Author: Jody Reese

New Hampshire got off to a great start leading the nation in vaccination rates but now it’s falling behind just as it’s becoming even more important to be vaccinated with the spread of the delta variant.

The delta variant is two to three times more contagious than the original virus and is now the dominant strain of the virus being spread in America. Almost everyone getting infected and then being admitted to the hospital and dying is unvaccinated. That says a lot.

In New Hampshire almost 65 percent of the population — including Gov. Chris Sununu — has been vaccinated but that still is the lowest in New England.

Some may ask, why does it matter? Those who want the vaccine have gotten it. It matters because a fair number of people (younger children and certain people with medical conditions) can’t yet be vaccinated. The more of us that are vaccinated, the more protected those most vulnerable are. It also matters because as effective as the vaccines are, they aren’t 100 percent effective, meaning that even vaccinated people can get Covid and will get sick and die. Again, the more of us vaccinated the less the vaccine will be passed around and the less likely people will get sick.

Hesitancy is definitely understandable. Covid is a new virus and these vaccines were developed quickly. Most of the vaccines we take were developed over many years and have been proven safe by generations of use.

Though it’s tempting to Google vaccine questions, please talk to your health care provider. Ask them about the safety of the three Covid vaccines that you can get.

Folks also have questions about how to get vaccinated. There are more than 400 locations across the state to get vaccinated. All for free. The state even has a van that can come to you to give you a vaccine — for free. Just visit the state’s vaccine website (vaccines.nh.gov).

This is one of those times when we need everyone to get the vaccine so we can finally stamp out the virus. We can do this if we choose to do it. Many who have hesitated simply don’t see the need for them to get vaccinated. They are young and healthy.

I’d argue that we aren’t just doing this for ourselves. We’re doing it for each other. It’s an act of kindness. If you’ve delayed now is the time to get vaccinated for yourself, for your family, for your community.

New Hampshire towns and cities will get a little over $558 million from President Joe Biden’s stimulus legislation passed in March. The question many have been asking — including the towns themselves — is what they should do with the money. In Manchester, the city is asking for suggestions.

There are many needs but since the money is a one-time windfall my hope is that it would be used to invest in areas where we’ll see long-term return. Housing is one of those areas.

Working through nonprofits and for-profit developers, towns could strategically help fund housing with seed money. With rents hitting $2,000 or more for a two-bedroom apartment in southern New Hampshire, it’s clear that more housing is needed. Building and renovating older buildings is very expensive and developers can’t be blamed for building more market-rate rentals. This is where that stimulus money could come into play. Local governments could provide grants to builders to help them finance projects where a portion of the units are rented at below-market rates for a number of years. Similarly local governments could use those funds to help nonprofit housing organizations develop more housing both as rentals and to sell at below-market rates.

Good housing builds communities. People feel vested and look out for each other and the neighborhood. This all helps to deter crime and build safer and stronger cities.

In addition to building or redeveloping more affordable housing, towns could use the money to help folks struggling to find housing with security deposits and temporary rental assistance.

In addition to housing, transportation remains a significant barrier to a better life. Without a car in New Hampshire, it’s very difficult to get a job, to get to medical appointments or to get kids to activities. Though investing in public transportation makes some sense in denser areas, our state’s rural characteristics make public transportation limited in how it can help. Using an existing organization, such as Good News Garage, towns could help families get reliable transportation and that would help more people get back on their feet.

Towns could also use these funds to help expand access to quality day care centers by helping centers expand or offering temporary vouchers to parents who can’t afford the care and who won’t have access to state funds. Let’s make good use of these funds so that they are not a handout but a hand up and will create opportunity and a safer community.

Imagine a world where parents go off to work and then know their kids are well cared for and safe. That’s my world. We’ve been lucky enough to find quality day care and have the means to pay for it. But not everyone is so fortunate.

Child care many times gets shunted aside as an afterthought in trying to build a more competitive country. But it’s critical.

One of the main issues that employers grapple with now is hiring parents who lack good and affordable child care. This is a double whammy. It prevents parents from getting the best jobs they can and prevents companies from hiring them. That’s one of the main problems the economy is facing now. As kids are stuck at home with a parent, that parent can’t go out and work. The labor market needs to expand and for that to happen there needs to be access to good quality childcare.

President Joe Biden’s recently proposed infrastructure plan tackles this child care issue by trying to expand the number of facilities, increasing pay to increase quality and helping parents pay for it with subsidies. Critics of the plan suggest that it should be more targeted to lower-income families and that the market should set the wages for day care providers. They may be right on some of those but at least we’re talking about child care as a key component of our country’s ability to compete internationally and make our economy stronger.

The key to any successful plan will be to use the existing private and nonprofit day care already out there and help them expand and help others enter the market with the necessary licensing. That’s also a key part of easing parents back into the workforce. We should be supporting professional child care providers who can demonstrate that they create a safe environment for our children.

New Hampshire already has a program that provides subsidies to low-income families. The hope is that, if Biden’s plan passes, it can supplement this program and get additional funding out to those who need it most quickly.

Some have complained that Americans aren’t starting enough small businesses. I agree. But it isn’t that people are suddenly not entrepreneurs. Look at all the people who have a side hustle. We’re surrounded by entrepreneurs. The problem is that these people need health insurance and child care and that’s hard to afford when you’re starting a business. Want to increase the number of entrepreneurs? Increase affordable health insurance and child care. That’s the real solution. It doesn’t need to be a hand out. It’s a hand up. And with the cost of health care and child care today, Granite Staters need a hand up to take that chance and be that entrepreneur.

Quality and affordable child care is vital to our national interests.

New Hampshire took a huge step a few days ago, announcing that it would lift its statewide mask mandate and start to relax other Covid safety measures. Gov. Chris Sununu attributed the moves to New Hampshire’s high rate of vaccination.

New Hampshire leads the country in the percentage of people who have received at least one dose — almost 60 percent as of April 18, according to NPR. Sununu cited New Hampshire’s vaccination rate and our decreased fatality rate as the factors behind his decision to lift the mask mandate, according to media reports.

New Hampshire’s success has been a marriage of good governance and our good sense. State government has acted with urgency to make it easy for anyone who wants to be vaccinated to be vaccinated. And the people of New Hampshire have responded by taking the state up on its offer. I was at a vaccine distribution center last week and was able to get vaccinated in just a few minutes.

Though we’re moving in the right direction and estimates are that by mid-July 85 percent of Granite Staters will be fully vaccinated, this won’t happen unless people continue to make the personal decision to get vaccinated. I do see a fair amount of vaccine hesitancy. And I understand it. These are new vaccines. However, just in the United States 212 million doses of the Covid vaccines have already been administered with few side effects. Former President Donald Trump and his wife were vaccinated before leaving office as was Vice President Mike Pence. President Joe Biden and his wife, Gov. Sununu and all the Congressional delegation have been vaccinated.

My point is that the vaccines are exceedingly safe. The faster we get vaccinated the faster we can expect life to return to normal. But this is one of those times when we need to support our neighbors and rely on them. Just you or me getting the vaccine isn’t enough. Seventy to 85 percent of people in the country need to be vaccinated for the disease to essentially die out. And while you may be young and healthy and the virus may not harm you (though it surely might) you’re doing this for those whom Covid does have a greater chance of harming. We’re asked every day to do things that are not only good for us but benefit our society. This is one of those things. Go to vaccines.nh.gov to find a place near you to get vaccinated. Do your part to return us to normal.

This week’s issue is a celebration of many of the things that make up what many of us have come to think of as our community and our quality of life. It’s Hippo’s Best of 2021 issue, where you tell us what you like best about your community.

We made a few changes this year to reflect the realities of the effects of the pandemic on our community, including more questions relating to outdoor activities and removing some relating to live performances. We also changed how we classified the Best of picks. We kept the Best of the Best — those are the top vote getters in a category — but rather than having geographic Best of picks, such as Best of Manchester, we classified the next four top picks as “Readers Bests.” We hope you enjoy the results and explore (once you feel safe to do so) your community. The results start on page 10.

One of my favorite parts of the Hippo Best of is the Smaaart answers we get. When asked to name the “Thing New Hampshire does better than any other state,” many folks answered maple syrup or four seasons or the great outdoors or live free and others suggested, “hate Massachusetts,” or “just not Massachusetts,” and others hit on a drinking theme with answers such as “booze” or “great beer” or “liquor stores on the highway.”

On a question where we asked readers to fill in the blank — “2021 in NH: Year of the __” — we also got some creative answers. They included “mask,” “Covid,” “lockdown,” “pandemic” and “Oh God, what now,” but there were also a few that went in different directions, such as lobsters, cider doughnuts, beer, babies, divorce, smiles and tattoos. I guess I can see that too much cider doughnuts and beer leads to babies and divorce and soon to follow are smiles and tattoos. “Oh God, what now.”

One of the more surprising reader answers came from our multiple-choice question asking whether vegetables on pizza are a crime against pizza, OK in the case of __ vegetable, or always delicious. One of our vote-counters asked if we were being punked because a fair number of people answered, “broccoli.” Clearly that vote counter is in the George H.W. Bush camp. But as you can see on page 13 the great majority of Hippo readers think veggies on pizza are A-OK (a sentiment I share). I even like broccoli on pizza, though probably not enough to mention it by name.

Thank you to everyone who voted and congratulations to all the winners — even broccoli.

We’re now deep into the pandemic hoping against hope that 2021 will be the year that we’ll get to see friends, family and some of our favorite places. It’s too early to say how much will return to normal or even what we’ll consider normal then, but there is hope. Hope that we’ll get back to some of those routines and hope that we’ll discover new ones. Hope for one another.
This is Hippo’s 20th Best Of and like many of you we’ve had to make some adjustments to accommodate this pandemic. We’ve changed some of the questions and pared down some categories to better reflect the current situation and past year. The goal, as always, is really to get the pulse of our readers about what they value and like about their community. As big box stores, big tech and big finance occupy more of our landscape it’s all the more important to share what you think makes your community special and different from another place. It’s those great hiking trails, those places to take the kids sledding, the places to grab a scoop on a lazy Sunday or the person who kicks your butt into shape. It’s the coffee shop with art for sale on the walls and it’s the juicy burger that you probably didn’t need. It’s that slice of pizza that you tell people from out of town about.
Those are the things we want to know about in our annual Best Of and it’s those things that we enjoy now or look forward to enjoying when we can. You can vote in this year’s best of at hippopress.com. Voting ends Feb. 28.