Spring is in the air, and Pat Daniels is back to walking around her Adams Morgan neighborhood with a flower in her hair. It’s her way of building a sense of community and putting a smile on her neighbors’ faces. Now that she’s been vaccinated, she feels more comfortable doing it.

“I have all my shots and I wear two masks, and most times I have the rubber surgical gloves,” Daniels says.

Daniels, who is a senior citizen living at Sarah’s Circle, a nonprofit affordable housing provider, has always been active: She loves walking and salsa dancing, taking the bus to the mall for window-shopping, and going to museums.

After a year of the pandemic, she’s cautiously easing herself back into her active life. She is taking in-person computer classes for seniors, feels safer at the grocery store, and she got to hug her great-granddaughters. But she’s not sure about traveling to a big family reunion this summer, and she doubts she’ll feel comfortable going on a long-planned vacation to New York City. That will take longer — maybe a year or more, Daniels says.

“We will have a temporary normal, but it will not be like it was before,” she says. “I am ready to spread my wings, but I’m doing it like [when] you put your toe in the water to see if it’s hot.”

Daniels isn’t alone in her cautious optimism. Across the region, government leaders are signaling signs of hope for a return to some form of “normal” life by the summer — or even earlier — as they roll back restrictions.

Throughout March, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser, Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam, and Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan have adjusted or removed capacity limits on indoor dining and other businesses, and reduced restrictions on large outdoor events. The reopening efforts come as more locals receive their vaccines, and as leaders aim to meet President Joe Biden’s goal of making all Americans eligible for a shot by May 1 — hopefully guaranteeing backyard barbecues by the Fourth of July.

But despite progress vaccinating swaths of the local population, public health experts say they’re trying to hammer home the message that there’s still a long way to go in reaching critical thresholds for a true return to normal. That means even some young residents are keeping their expectations for “Shot Girl Summer” fairly low.

“I want to get back to normal, and it absolutely feels like we’ve had real progress this year,” says 24-year-old Fairfax resident Doug Klain. “But at the same time what if we totally mess it up? What if we reopen, and just completely mess all this stuff up and lose all the progress?”

“A really long way off” 

While the vaccine distribution process in the D.C. region has been imperfect — particularly in accounting for racial disparities in vaccine access — there’s some cause for cheer: A lot of shots are getting into a lot of arms.

As of late March, 19% of D.C. residents have been partially or fully vaccinated, while nearly 2.5 million Virginians — roughly 29% of the state’s population — have received at least the first shot. In Maryland, more than 1.6 million first doses have been administered, roughly 28% of the state’s population. And all three jurisdictions expect to open up eligibility to residents over 16 years old in a matter of weeks.

But even with more and more locals getting vaccinated, the danger of future spikes in cases is still present. Infection rates are currently ticking up in Maryland and Virginia, and case counts regionally remain at levels seen last November. Some metrics are still higher than during the initial surge last spring. As of Tuesday, March 30, the seven-day average of total new cases in D.C., Maryland, and Virginia was 2,884. Last spring, that metric peaked around 2,200.

One factor in that uptick might be people seeing news about the vaccine rollout and feeling comfortable taking bigger risks.

“As there’s more media coverage and more people get vaccinated, people might be letting their guard down a bit in terms of the interactions that they have, even if they themselves have not yet been vaccinated,” says Natalie Talis, the population health manager at the Alexandria Department of Health. “But people need to be really aware that we are still a really long way off from most of our community members being fully vaccinated.”

The local pandemic picture has improved significantly since the pandemic’s last peak in January, but there’s still cause for concerns about backsliding, according to Anne Monroe, a professor of epidemiology at The George Washington University.

“I don’t think anyone in public health would feel comfortable saying that we’re out of the woods,” she says.

According to Monroe, the worst-case scenario for the next several months would be if the region saw a sustained spike in cases comparable to the surge this past winter. This time, it would be driven potentially by the wider transmission of new, more contagious strains of the disease. Federal officials — including the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — are warning of another surge nationally, if current trends continue.

If that doesn’t come to pass, Monroe says this summer’s best-case scenario is that the regional vaccine rollout continues at a steady pace, and cases, hospitalizations, and deaths stay low even as restrictions on sports and entertainment venues, social gatherings, and workplaces ease.

Even if that rosy picture turns out to be the case, however, she worries that an uneventful summer could quickly turn to a devastating fall as temperatures turn cooler and more people gather indoors. Monroe also points out that it’s unclear how long immunity will last for people who have been vaccinated or have survived a coronavirus infection.

“What happens again in the fall and winter?” she says. “We still have circulating cases, and then the temperatures start to go down again. Everyone goes back inside again.”

“It’s really easy for people to tune it out” 

Effective public health messaging has been key to advising the public about safety during the pandemic. Now, health experts say the mix of uncertainty and hope spurred by vaccinations has created a new challenge. They want to give people a sense of progress, but they must stay realistic about all that’s left to do. They can’t abandon the drumbeat message of the past year — keep social distancing, wearing masks, and staying home as much as possible — but worry that the drumbeat could become inaudible.

“I think that there is a tremendous amount of hope out there. There’s the light at the end of the tunnel,” Talis says. “At some point, if your message doesn’t change and it always just is saying the same thing without any variation, it’s really easy for people to tune it out, which I think would be the worst-case scenario — for people to just be so over it that they’re not hearing anything that we’re sharing.”

And now there’s another layer to public health messages: how to talk about what vaccinated people should and shouldn’t do, with vaccinated people and with unvaccinated people.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued its first set of public health guidelines for vaccinated individuals in early March and plans to continue updating its recommendations as more of the population is vaccinated. Currently, vaccinated people can visit with other fully vaccinated people indoors without wearing masks or maintaining physical distancing, and they can visit indoors with unvaccinated, unmasked people from a single household who are at low risk of serious illness. But the CDC still cautions against nonessential travel for the fully vaccinated, and the messaging around the safety of other public indoor activities, like  is less clear. 

“It’s just frustrating [seeing] the juxtaposition of what seems to be reality, and then what is real,” says Northwest D.C. resident Jessica Pic, comparing the sentiment about summer normalcy to the city’s vaccination rates.

Pic says she was conflicted about D.C. Mayor Bowser’s recent decision to open Nationals Park to 5,000 fans in April. She and her fiance are season ticket holders and miss attending games, but she says it doesn’t feel like D.C. has reached a large enough percentage of people vaccinated to make such a reopening move. By her own estimate, she won’t be fully vaccinated until June.

“I feel like everyone’s rushing to ‘Oh the summer is going to be back to normal,’ but there are a lot of people who will not get vaccinated, or be able to participate in that until July and August,” Pic says. Where does that leave us?”

Ultimately, Talis says that locals will have to make their own decisions within the framework of what their jurisdictions permit. She just hopes to be able to provide people with good, non-judgmental information about how to approach individual calculations of risk this summer.

“It’s not just, ‘Don’t do this, and if you do it, you’re a monster,’” Talis says. “It’s more so ‘Hey, we still think this isn’t a good idea. If you really are going to pursue this, here’s how you can make it safer for both yourself, your family and anyone that you might be visiting.’”

That’s especially true as local restrictions become more and more permissive. Monroe, who is also an internal medicine doctor and sees patients regularly, says she tries to remind people that the individual cost of getting COVID-19 can be extremely high, including chronic long-term symptoms, serious neurological problems, and of course the chance of hospitalization or even death.

“I think the message right now is don’t let down your guard because things are getting better,” she says. “At the end of the day, you still don’t want to get this illness. If you can avoid it, you don’t want it.”

“It’s just going to take some time” 

Monroe emphasizes that returning to a more normal-seeming lifestyle, whenever that happens, is going to be an emotional process for everyone. Some will feel comfortable jumping back in to activities sooner than others, regardless of where the official restrictions stand.

As a doctor, Monroe has been vaccinated for several months. But even with that safeguard, she says she hasn’t changed her approach to pandemic precautions much, in part because her household includes someone particularly vulnerable to the disease. She’s not shaking hands with people. Her family is confining their vacations to camping trips in places accessible by car.

She needs more time, she says, before she gets back to the laundry list of things she misses.

“I would like to go to the theater again. I would like to go to concerts again. … I’d like to be able to go to events at my children’s school again,” she says. “I want to be able to sing. I want to go to church … I think it’s just going to take some time and some confidence.”

Talis, likewise, has kept her expectations modest for the summer. She hasn’t had a day off in a year, and she hopes she’ll be able to take one and go somewhere remote with her husband — if he gets vaccinated first.

Meanwhile Daniels, the high-spirited senior from Adams Morgan, is planning her birthday celebration, which falls on Juneteenth.

“I think I’m going to try to celebrate that, even if I have to wear gloves and three masks, because this year, you know, it was supposed to be a milestone,” she says. “Every year is a milestone for me after you’re 29 plus tax.”

Klain, the 24-year-old Fairfax resident, is expecting a weird feeling when he returns to his downtown office building this September, situated in a neighborhood that’s been vacated by telework restrictions and business closures over the past year. Gone are the days of grabbing a drink across the street from his office at the Post Pub, which closed during the pandemic after more than four decades in business.

“I know that even when we go back, I’m sure that everybody has been super out of touch with the neighborhood where they work, that when people do finally start going back in it’s going to be like you barely recognize the place,” Klain says. “Even if we return back to normal, it’s not going to be normal.”