What are your plans?

What are you going to do once you’re fully vaccinated? It’s one of the great existential questions of our pandemic time, one that pops up lately whenever I see friends via Zoom, which is almost always how I see friends.

Will we get on a plane? Go back to the gym? Go to the hairdresser, a ballgame, a restaurant, a party? Will we shake hands? Hug? Buy a ticket for Lady Gaga?

Or, given that life is mostly habit, will we keep hanging out on the sofa watching Netflix?

My pal Mark recently put a version of the question to his Twitter followers. What, he wondered, would Americans do once the pandemic lifted? He proposed three options:

1. Would they party hard to make up for lost time?

2. Would they go back to “normal”?

3. Would they stay mostly isolated because they’ve grown used to their cocoon?

One respondent, noting that the jubilant decade called the Roaring ’20s followed the 1918 flu pandemic, predicted Americans would “party party partay!” No doubt some will, especially the young ones. Photos from St. Patrick’s Day festivities in Chicago suggest many of them have already chosen option 1.

But to Mark’s surprise, there was wide support for choice number 3: staying isolated. Several respondents happily referred to themselves as hermits, and seemed glad to stay that way.

Call it “the other vaccine hesitancy,” the reluctance many people will have even when they’re vaccinated to return to crowds and old habits.

The liberation we feel from vaccination is like opening a window on a warm day in March: Yeah, that fresh air feels good, but it’s still winter. Don’t dream too big.

Still, we edge closer to a resemblance of freedom. A recent Axios-Ipsos poll found Americans grow more optimistic that the pandemic will end within the year. Nearly a third said they’ve already returned to in-person gatherings. Almost that many say they will once they, or everyone in their circle, is vaccinated. A fifth of the respondents said they’ll wait until officials say it’s safe.

For now, I’ve divided my post-vaccination “to do” list into three parts: Things I might do soon (return to the gym). Things I will do soon if the weather warms up (eat outside at a restaurant). Things I won’t do, at least not yet (eat inside a restaurant).

And every few days, I Google flights—Savannah sounds nice in springtime—then I close my laptop and heed the voice that says, “When in doubt, wait.”