Is COVID Spoiling Encounters?

The pandemic has seriously affected some people’s mental health.

No one knows when the COVID-19 pandemic will be over. Still, once infection rates have fallen and economic reconstruction is underway, we can anticipate greater attention for the psychological damage caused by lockdowns, diminished social contacts, touch deprivation, growing rates of anxiety-related disorders and addictions, and resulting strains on mental health services in particular.

What of more subtle—and widespread—psychosocial effects?

A few months ago, I asked six friends whether they questioned people regarding their vaccination status. Though living in different countries, these friends were of the same demographic, and all had graduate qualifications in anthropology. Trained to observe and to reflect, all described changes in their social interactions. Intrigued, I approached three more friends, demographically and professionally comparable. Do they think any changes they’ve noticed are affecting their lives?

Sara* (all names are pseudonyms) lives in Zagreb, Croatia. Though personally unaffected, she referred to a friend who “believes everyone should have the right to choose whether they want to get vaccinated or not. She feels that more people should rebel and resist. Once she claimed, angrily, that she would be so annoyed with her boyfriend (who lives with her) that if he got vaccinated, ‘I swear, I would dump him and kick him out.’”

In neighboring Bosnia, vaccines were long in desperately short supply. Enisa, engaged in doctoral studies abroad, described a recent visit to her Bosnian hometown. Only a few of her friends had been vaccinated.

“I openly asked them as I was afraid for my own security. Some of my friends are very scared regarding COVID, so they also got the vaccine a few months ago. Some of them would say that they don’t want to talk about it, as it’s a private thing. Some would say they are thinking [of getting] it, but still, they want time to pass, and they want to be sure, especially women at an age when they are planning children. Some of my family members are convinced of conspiracy theories. I could not talk to them. I would spend hours in discussion… sometimes they became so aggressive…”

Maja (from Belgrade, Serbia), who is unvaccinated, sent me a perceptive addition to what she’d written previously.

“Today, I talked with my best friend who came from Spain and who told me “we won’t hug” (she’s vaccinated), and I felt relieved. My (vaccinated) brother, whom I hadn’t seen for 2 years, hugged me and I thought how rude he was. Strangely enough, he wasn’t scared that I could infect him, but I was afraid that he could carry COVID (as he’d changed planes a number of times returning from Kazakhstan) and infect me! My (unvaccinated) cousin hugged me likewise, and I was annoyed with that. I changed, and I think I changed in a bad way.”

Effects may go beyond relations with family and friends

For some, disruptions may be of a different order. Abbi, quoted in my previous post, lives in a Canadian community in which anti-vax attitudes are common. To avoid unnecessary confrontations, she’s cautious in asking people if they’ve been vaccinated. Significantly, it is the community in which she’d grown up, and she’d returned there during the lockdown.

Tanya also lives in a community in which anti-vax attitudes are common. Would she ask people about their vaccination status? Like Abbi, she would not. But there is a difference. The small Ohio town in which Tanya lives is not her hometown. She moved there after getting married.

“The anti-vaxxers are a dominant cultural force in this area… Disinformation and conspiracy theories abound, close friends even considering it as plausible. It all makes me feel very sad and further isolated from the school community where my children go to school (without masks).”

Whilst others referred to tensions arising in specific relationships (with family members, partners, friends), Tanya refers to feeling increasingly alienated from the community in which she is raising her children. None of the women I approached has seriously suffered from the psychosocial effects of the pandemic. Yet, most could point to minor disturbances in their social interactions. How transient these will be, what traces they will leave, remains to be seen.

Effects depend on culturally specific norms of “meeting and greeting”

One additional response, which I haven’t yet mentioned, came from a longtime friend who lives in rural India. Radha, a very experienced sociologist, responded somewhat differently. More analytically. But it’s the differences she attributes to different ways of behaving, to cultural differences, which I think give particular pause for thought.

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“If a distant acquaintance happened to visit, and irrespective of whether the other person was wearing a mask, it was seen as the right thing to do to put on one’s own mask, politely, without projecting a judgmental stance.

“Younger people have been particularly respectful of the acknowledged vulnerability of senior citizens, wearing masks when in their presence, irrespective of the vaccination status of either party…

“Older people—including me!—have felt awkward about touching elbows or fists! We were happy from the start to revert to the Asian form of greeting with folded hands (namaste). It was a relief that one could be polite and warm and culturally grounded, without having to make greeting choices.”

How different for people living in a country (such as Serbia) in which people normally greet their friends and family members by hugging and kissing. Cultural differences mean that Maja and Radha have experienced the ‘subtle psychosocial effects of the pandemic’ very differently.