Sunday Dispatch: Pandemic Friendships

I know it has been often said but does anyone else feel the loss of friendships that we developed over the pandemic? Being forced to stay at home helped me to reach out and create all sorts of new relationships with people all over the country and the world because of the pandemic but as life ash returned to normal these relationships have seriously fallen off. I suppose this is particularly the case with a podcast community that I recently left behind and whose founding podcast has also ended.

Over the two years of the pandemic we talked, we shared, we met up (safely) and we spent evenings together over zoom. We shared out time and our talents. We went through a difficult time of life together. Now I often only see these people on social media. I am reminded of how much I miss them. Somehow I miss those late night, weekend zoom meetings. I miss being able to hang out in the coolest bar ever with people I actually liked being around where the alcohol was free flowing and priced right. I’ve never been able to replicate in life (especially in the Seattle area) the sense of camaraderie and pleasant feeling that I experienced in various digital events I went to over the pandemic. I met tons of people I would have never met. I joined the best book club that I had ever been apart.

I suppose, like so many things in life, all good things just come to an end. Not everything is forever. As the world opened up we went back to our lives that we had in 2019. We re-engaged with our friends in our local area. We finally shut off zoom and began to go out to bars and restaurants again, even if tentatively so. People were eager to get back to normal or at least engage in whatever normal meant now in 2022. However, have we lost something in our rush to get back to normal? I feel like those connections that we made and were forced to make over distance and through screens have faltered, possibly never to return. After two years, it’s hard to get any traction for going back to attending things over Zoom.

Today I’m reflective of the past years of the pandemic. On Twitter, I see two camps in my feed. The first camp who is decrying the lack of a response given rising cases and the lack of mask mandates. Still others are talking about Pfizer’s admission that they never tested the vaccine for transmission. It was no surprise that vaccines didn’t prevent the Omicron wave or the subsequent variants. However, this stands in contradiction to the messaging around vaccines. The government has failed on messaging about the pandemic since the beginning. Now, people are on Twitter apologizing to the anti-vax crowd about their strong stance on the vaccine. First the vaccine was going to save lives and now it appears the vaccine will only save people from severe disease. For many of us, like myself, this has been true. That is now how the vaccine was billed and perception is reality.

So now we have people are hiding in their homes until “it is safe to go outside.” And people who feel justified that the only people who had to worry about the pandemic were the elderly and obese. People are dying of sudden death who might not have otherwise. The pandemic has fallen off the headlines and with it American’s tolerance for measures to ensure its end. Covid-19 will be with us for some time. The sudden heart attacks and strokes that are possibly linked to Covid infection aren’t making the headlines that they should. I wonder if they ever will.

It has been a long 2, nearly three years since Covid-19 was introduced into our lives. Society has changed. Nothing is the same even though it seems like everything should be the same. I’m reminded of a thread that I read on Reddit in 2020 about what people would have done over the summer of 2020 instead of listlessly sitting at home. It was a several thousand comment long thread of canceled weddings, vacations, and entire careers. It was all gone in the blink of an eye replaced with zoom hangouts and new connections forged thanks to the internet.

I suppose it is unfair to hope that things would remain the way they were in that halcyon time. It was a unique period of history that I doubt we will ever live to see again. But I miss my pandemic friends. I wonder what they are doing. I sent out texts and make social media posts/replies but I don’t hear much back. I miss it; I really do miss it. My life hasn’t very much returned to its pre-pandemic normal quite yet. It has to some degree. I attended an in-person conference this year and I went on another long trip where I met new people in new locations. But I do feel like my social life has taken a backseat to it all. Here’s to the friends we met, the times we had, and memories of the pandemic.