3 Rules for Politeness During a Confusing Social Transition
Our pre-pandemic social manners have been upended. But although etiquette is always in flux, its principles should be timeless.
The abrupt abandonment of handshakes and hugs. An expansion of personal space in public to six feet. And detailed conversations preceding any social plans about who else was invited and what risky behaviors they might have recently engaged in. Before the pandemic, any of these actions would have been considered rude, but over the past year, they became polite. Although etiquette has always had an undertone of safety first, during the pandemic, safety became the main point of politeness. More than 15 months, multiple lockdowns, and hundreds of millions of vaccine shots later, politeness is once again shifting as pandemic restrictions begin to scale back in America. For many people, this might feel like etiquette whiplash.
