For much of the Covid-19 pandemic, Laura G. Bustamante longed for the weekend nights when she used to drive into Manhattan to meet friends, often at karaoke bars in the Koreatown neighborhood.
She’s now fully vaccinated, and many New York City bars and restaurants have reopened. Yet Ms. Bustamante says she doesn’t feel ready to return to her pre-pandemic jaunts to the city, and she is only comfortable meeting friends there one-on-one, preferably outdoors.
“You look at social media, and you see some people out there having all that fun,” says the 49-year-old product-management consultant in suburban Rockland County, N.Y. “I can’t picture myself in that picture.”
Ever since the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention gave the all-clear for vaccinated people to gather indoors without masks and resume pre-pandemic activities, many have eagerly returned to dining inside restaurants, attending parties and flying to see friends and family. (And plenty of people already were doing so before.) Yet for others, returning to their former lives—and much of the outside world—is proving tough after more than a year of relative isolation.