Meeting and Greeting in Times of COVID-19

How the pandemic has affected social interactions and with what consequences for mental health and general well-being will engage the attention of therapists and social scientists for months or years to come. In much of the world, including the Netherlands where I live, greeting a friend typically involved physical contact: a handshake, a hug, or maybe two (or even three!) kisses on the cheek. Over the past 18 months, many of us have become more cautious.

The urge to hug someone might now be preceded by a questioning look or a direct question. Is the hug welcome? Is it safe? But how else might newfound caution manifest itself?

Is it acceptable to ask someone if they’ve been vaccinated? I hadn’t really thought about this until a recent interview with Lisanne, a Dutch journalist. I wasn’t then aware that it had been aired in U.S. media. Might asking constitute an illegal infringement of a right to privacy? Do people avoid asking for fear of damaging friendships?

Responding to Lisanne (in Dutch!), I supposed it would vary between cultures, but also depend on the specific situation. Curiosity aroused, however, I decided to put the question to a few friends. I approached six people, all with graduate training in anthropology and of the same demographic (female, age range 35 to 45), but each living in a different country.

Vaccine cultures

Within countries, communities differ in terms of what anthropologists think of as "local vaccine cultures." I discovered that people who’ve been vaccinated but live in communities with large numbers of vaccine skeptics tend to be extra cautious. Asking anyone other than close friends would be risking confrontation.

Siobhan* (all names are pseudonyms) lives in a university town in southern England “where uptake is not as high as elsewhere in the country. There are people within my social network who probably won't get vaccinated. These people I wouldn’t ask directly. If I were to ask them, it would be seeking confrontation rather than a conversation about which ones we got and side effects, etc. I just find it too polarized a thing to bother having a conversation around.”

Similarly, Abbi*, who lives in a small town in British Columbia, writes, “I have asked friends, and most of them said that they will ask but are delicate about it. One friend said she won't ask if she already knows, for example, that the person is an anti-vaxxer because that would open up an uncomfortable and non-productive discussion or argument. Another friend said she would ask but with non-judgment and that health and safety take priority over social etiquette.”

As an unvaccinated vaccine skeptic, Maja’s* situation is different. Living in Belgrade, the capital of Serbia, she sees little point in asking others “because we've been discussing COVID for more than a year, so I know who is vaccinated and who's not. If people are against vaccination (because they know we're also against it), they would say that they didn't vaccinate themselves without being asked in the first place. So, in short, is it acceptable to ask about vaccination? There aren't people I would/wouldn't ask, but I don't have the need to ask anybody. But for myself, I find this question discomforting because, in the majority of cases, it comes from a vaccinated person, and then I feel I'm part of an uncivilized mass of people who don't care about their own health nor about other people's health.” Of course, that’s not how she sees herself.

Is it worth risking confrontation?

Alicia*, in Italy, told me she’d asked her father. "It’s risking friendships," he’d told her. Do people feel it is worth taking the risk? Unsurprisingly, it depends on what’s at stake.

Someone noted approvingly that a dating site she’s on asks about vaccination status. Siobhan “would want to know if staff and parents of children at my son's nursery are vaccinated.” Abbi mentioned a friend who runs her own restaurant… “She [….] does not mandate a mask in her restaurant because of the amount of anti-maskers and the political situation here in town (we have one of the lowest vaccine rates in the country). She doesn't want people to boycott her business. But she is concerned about people getting COVID.”

The question is understood differently where there's a shortage of vaccines.

More surprisingly, how people interpret the question seems to depend as much on the availability of vaccines as on cultural specifics. In Europe, as in North America, COVID-19 vaccines are widely available. Marisol* lives in Spain, where it’s generally assumed that “people our age are either vaccinated or in line to be.” But she’s originally from Colombia, where discussing vaccination status has a different significance. “A few weeks ago, in a WhatsApp group, my friends asked us who live in Europe if we were already vaccinated. But the situation was more about how 'lucky' we were since, in Colombia, vaccination has been slow. Thus, I think that, currently, the question, when raised, is about if you have been able to get the vaccine, not so much if you are willing to get it.”

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Kacia*, who lives in Mexico City, told me that “it is not only OK to ask about vaccine status, but it is something people like to talk about. It’s something to brag about for some people. Something to prove that you are not a threat to the others… private schools mention that all their staff are vaccinated to attract more new students.”

There was a feeling that positions are becoming more entrenched. Even if it’s not an intrusion, asking is becoming trickier. But then again, it’s not the same everywhere or for everyone.