By ANNE MARIE CHAKER
After playing a softball game earlier this month, Kevin Carlson, a Washington, D.C., real-estate agent, was introduced to a teammate’s friend as they walked off the field.
Moments after some introductory chitchat the unthinkable happened: “The guy reaches his hand out and says, ‘I’m John.’ ’’ In a matter of seconds, Mr. Carlson, who hadn’t shaken anyone’s hand in over a year, says he weighed everything from health risks to rudeness. Even though he had gotten his second Moderna shot last month, “all sorts of calculations went flowing through my head,” he recalls. “Minimum contact? Maximum contact? Firm handshake?” In the end, he decided on a “light, halfhearted handshake,” he says. “Totally awkward.”
As people soldiered through months of the pandemic, they got accustomed to Covid-era social etiquette: distancing, masking, avoiding contact. But now as vaccinations rise, expectations around social interactions are changing again—and nobody knows how to navigate them. “There aren’t any etiquette manuals I can reference in times like these,” says etiquette expert Jacqueline Whitmore, founder of the Protocol School of Palm Beach. ”We are entering uncharted waters.” The CDC has relaxed guidelines for fully vaccinated people. It says it is now safe for vaccinated people to gather privately in small groups without masks or physical distancing. It is also safe for vaccinated people to travel without quarantining afterward. But the CDC also advises vaccinated people to continue practicing social distancing and wear masks in public places.
Nearly half of U.S. adults say they feel at least somewhat more relaxed about pandemic public-health rules compared with last winter, according to a Civic-Science survey of more than 2,000 people this month. Of those, 18% feel “much more relaxed.” But 40% say they feel the same, and 9% at least somewhat less relaxed.
Courtney Dennis, a school board director in York County, Pa., says she has noticed in the line at her grocery store in recent weeks that more people aren’t following the social-distancing markers on the floor. It makes her uneasy, so at first she tries to send a silent message with her body language. “If it is a straight line, I’ll take a large step to the side,” she says. “Or the person will move up in line, but I won’t,” she says. Sometimes, her fellow shoppers have failed to pick up her signals. So she’s had to turn around and state it directly; “I’ll say, ‘Yeah, I’m just social distancing,’ ” she says.
The lack of clear social norms now flies against our desire for certainty, psychologists say. “We always have an implicit, deep-seated worry that we might offend someone by what we say,” says K. Luan Phan, a psychiatry professor at Ohio State University. “Now, it is exponentially amplified because of new rules and individual differences in how you approach risk.”
Terry Mattingly, a 46-year-old school psychologist and family mediator, recently ran into someone she knew near the entrance to the local gym. Ms. Mattingly wore a mask, but he didn’t—and he went in for a hug. She balked. “Ohhhh, I’m not really hugging,” she
ILLUSTRATION BY DOMINIC BUGATTO
recalls saying. She stepped back and performed “that sort of air hug that people do,” she says. She got her second vaccine shot last month, but is still finding her way toward what feels comfortable.
She had another awkward encounter a few days later. While swimming laps in an indoor pool, another man approached her to ask if he could share the lane. “I’ve had both my shots,” he said. She hesitated, pointing to the sign indicating a one-person-at-a-time Covid rule. After a few seconds of quick thought, Ms. Mattingly came up with a compromise: She would start on the opposite end of the lane.
Families are facing awkwardness too. Earlier this month, after the CDC issued new travel guidelines for vaccinated people, Pamela Zimmer called her daughter to let her know she received her second vaccine and that she couldn’t wait to visit. “I said, ‘I am ready,’ ” says Ms. Zimmer, a 67-year-old retired leadership development coordinator in Brookfield, Wis., who hasn’t seen her grandchildren Hank, 6, and Lena, 3, since last October.
Her daughter, however, wasn’t sure. While Natale Zimmer, a 41year-old communications consultant in Silver Spring, Md., and her husband have received their first shots, their children aren’t vaccinated. With grandparents eager to visit, “We’ve had awkward conversations where I’ve said, ‘I’m not sure it is the right thing right now,’ ” she says, concerned about the possibility that grandparents could still transmit the virus to the children.
She still wants the grandparents to take strict precautions, such as quarantining for several days upon arrival and taking a Covid test. Pamela, her mother, now says she will likely wait until everyone—including the children, when a vaccine becomes available— can be fully vaccinated before visiting, or might drive rather than fly.
When Elyssa Gray went to visit her friend Leslie Hirsch, she walked up to her front door in Old Westbury, N.Y. The former college roommates, now both 51 years old, hadn’t seen one another in over a year. Ms. Gray and Ms. Hirsch both received their second shots, though Ms. Gray, an executive coach, still wore a mask: She was within two weeks of the second dose and knew her friend had autoimmune issues. “I was being cautious for her,” Ms. Gray says.
Ms. Hirsch, a lawyer, recalls “I was so excited. I went to the door—and I see her with her mask on.” She thought for a moment, asked her friend to take her mask off, “and we looked at each other and hugged.”
He decided on a ‘light, halfhearted handshake,’ he says. ‘Totally awkward.’