The little-known Midwest town carrying America’s vaccine hopes: ‘Everyone is working day and...

The small town of Portage, Michigan, represents the many ways America’s Covid-19 response has gone very right and very wrong.

It’s where a state-of-the-art Pfizer factory is churning out the company’s coronavirus vaccine, part of 50 million total doses it hopes to manufacture this year, and 1.3 billion the next. And it’s where, despite the proximity to the next stage of pandemic relief, the virus has continued to wreck lives and livelihoods all the same.

A mile-and-a-half down Portage Road from the Pfizer complex sits D&R’s Daily Grind Cafe, a small, house-like building with red awnings. The owner, Dave Morris, 59, bought the business 12 years ago and fixed it up, hoping it would help set him up for retirement. In the last few months, state shutdown orders have nearly driven him to ruin.