Judgement Time

Traveling for the quarterly team meeting used to be routine pre-covid but seeing that invite land in my inbox filled me with enough anxiety that I could not sleep most night. This is going to be a couple of dozen people with whatever vaccination status gathered together to team, bond and celebrate the end of the pandemic and return to normal - or so it seems. Everyone has the choice to attend remotely but its obviously not where the momentum lies. Being out and about is an act pregnant with meaning these days. It acts as a social signal of being a people person rather than a recluse, being a company culture adherent rather than someone who marches to the beat of their own drummer, being a bold risk-taker and not a wimp and the list goes on. This is an active and conscious choice imbued with reasons that never applied before to traveling for work. You just showed up to these things as needed and life went on. 

Now it seems you need to show up needed or not and be counted, every single time. Each incident of sitting it out will act as a strike - and there are only so many a person can afford. One guy I work with is widely advertising the days of the week he can be found in the office so anyone else who is around can come meet with him. Among the folks meeting him, there will be those like this man, people who would sooner die than get vaccinated, Maybe I am completely missing the mark here, but what truly is the point of such exuberant outreach in such a time. The guidance on masking while indoors has been a moving target and yet choosing to be safe and do that is met with looks of derision wherever I go. The optics will be that much worse in a workplace situation where people are mingling like the pandemic never happened. 

There is a good chance that some people in the midst of these needless interactions will get even the vaccinated among us pretty sick and depending on the person, some of those could end up becoming long haulers. As a society we went from "do everything you need to do to keep you and your loved ones safe" to "time to mingle because if you don't we will all judge you". I am not sure I understand why people can longer act from their own level of risk tolerance after all we have been through and for many among us, this is far from over.