(First published on Medium here)
It’s surprising and deeply disappointing to me that as the planet opens up and countries leave their COVID restrictions behind, this is when I feel most keenly the absence of friends who are avoiding me for being unvaccinated. Is avoiding unvaccinated people really about reducing viral exposure? How can it be when Omicron transmission is so high that almost everyone has been exposed or will be? Is this rank prejudice?
Or it could be that the people who have stopped socializing with me aren’t discriminating against me for ideological reasons. It could be that they just want to avoid the virus, but they know the world is full of unvaccinated people and there’s no way to 100% avoid us, so they avoid who they can. Unable to know who’s vaccinated and who’s unvaccinated at the store or on the bus, they take control of what they can take control of: avoiding people they definitely know are unvaccinated. They try to take comfort in being able to at least do that much.
Both those moves aren’t about reducing viral exposure in a significant way. They are reactions to not having control. They’re attempts to control the little bit they can: not socializing with people like Regina.
We’ve all said this, maybe over and over, since 2020: I can’t believe this is my life now. I’m saying it these days because I feel devastated by the state of my personal relationships. I’m a far-left-leaning, science-believing, Democrat who has left-leaning, science-believing, Democratic friends. And I have a lot of friends, but these days we’re split by how we’ve responded to the coronavirus.
Chicago’s January proof-of-vaccination mandate stopped me from going to restaurants and attending in-person events. Omicron caused almost every one of my vaccinated friends to stop socializing out of fear of illness. It was actually in December that, out of loneliness, I started a Meetup for unvaccinated people, but in January it was hard to get any socializing going with anyone at all.
I discovered that starting a Meetup for unvaccinated people didn’t go down well with some of my vaccinated friends.
My friends now fall into three categories: 1) those who are actively avoiding my physical presence, 2) those who are perfectly fine with my physical presence, and 3) those I’m afraid to get in touch with because I don’t want to be rejected. Of course some people would say, “Just don’t tell them your vaccination status. It’s none of their business.” But this feels different from withholding that I’m Catholic or not an American citizen or some other distinction that people discriminate against but that can be hidden indefinitely. Being Catholic or not an American citizen doesn’t cause people to think their lives are in danger. Many Chicago northsiders think an unvaccinated person could cause them great harm.
I distinguish “north siders” because not all of Chicagoland has been equally afraid of the coronavirus. In the past few months I discovered there was a lot less mask-wearing and vaccination-anxiety on the west and south sides of Chicago. There’s also less of that fear in the suburbs. It seems the most mask-policing and proof-of-vaccination enforcement happens in the area we call the north side of Chicago (the part that’s near the lake). It seems to me that — at least in Chicago — it’s white, financially comfortable, highly educated Democrats that are the most afraid of the coronavirus, which is striking because that’s the demographic that’s most able to work from home (but no, not all of them. I know).
Why would white, financially comfortable, highly educated Democrats be the most afraid of the coronavirus? The theory a friend and I came up with is that’s the demographic that both despises racism and knows they benefit from it. Many white, financially comfortable, highly educated Democrats live in ongoing psychic pain as white people in a racist society.
Then in 2020 the CDC reversed its early opinion that we shouldn’t wear masks, and in 2021 the drugs known as the coronavirus vaccines became available. The pandemic established a new morality: good people followed CDC guidelines and bad people didn’t. This powerful new equation included the belief that good people saved lives by following CDC guidelines while bad people didn’t care who we killed.
These new social protocols gave white, well-educated liberals the moral high ground again. This was a position they could hold with no guilt or inner conflict. I’ve seen white north siders behave the most severely towards those who don’t mask each time we step out of our homes, and of course, I’ve felt the social repercussions of not getting vaccinated. Sadly, I live in one of the most far-left-leaning, far north side neighborhoods in Chicago. For 27 years Rogers Park was exactly where I belonged, but it doesn’t feel that way right now. This is a part of Chicago where vaccinated people are good and unvaccinated people are bad.
So my focus is to keep making new friends, which I’m constantly doing. Fortunately, there’s no one better at turning strangers into friends than me. The challenge is getting off the north side of Chicago to do it. I suspect I need more west and south side friends. I need fewer pandemic paranoid people in my life.
I might even pretend it’s 1993 again and I just moved to Chicago where I don’t know anyone and I need to make friends from scratch. Back in 1993, I didn’t reach out to just anyone. I took my time finding people I felt a connection with, and I slowly nurtured those friendships until they were strong. I spent some very lonely years waiting for “my tribe” to appear, but it eventually did.
And then my tribe was ripped apart by this pandemic, so I’d better goddamn be dead before the next one.
If you live in Chicago and are looking for a new friend, contact me through my blog. As the U.S. slowly (glacially in Chicago) moves out of pandemic practices, I’m re-building my social life.
5 March 2022