It started with a potential dating partner.

I met someone on Hinge about three weeks ago. He was seriously sweet and we met for a date. I loved the date, we had so much to talk about, so many bike stories to share. His eyes were deeply set and sparkling blue. He had dimples.

For the next couple of weeks we each had to be away for different reasons: he had plans to work and play in Washington and I had to go to a remote part of Idaho for work. While I was there, he texted me good morning almost every day. We had phone conversations that left me giddy. We sent photos back and forth, mountain bikes and archaeological sites.

I was really looking forward to a second date. The anticipation had built, and I was hoping for an actual connection.

We met up, and it was nice. We shared some pizza and a salad at one of my favorite watering holes, and the subject of COVID vaccines came up. To give a bit of back story, this guy had met my friend Dan during the pandemic when Dan was volunteering to run a shuttle for the Trans Cascadia mountain bike race. On our date, he said “Dan let us on the shuttle without masks”, to which I grinned and replied “Dan should know better.” We continued to talk, mostly about bikes and his life. When we went to leave, we paid separately, which I prefer. When we got to my place, where he’d parked his car, the kiss we’d talked about anticipating didn’t happen. Not even a hug (he gave me two after our first date). He wished me good night, said he had fun, and departed.

The next day I did not get a good morning text. I did not get a text at all for the next 48 hours.

I sent a couple of messages, thinking perhaps he’d like to be reached out to, since he’d been taking such initiative. He has kids and had picked them up for the weekend, and I didn’t know what to expect in terms of exchanges while he was busy with them. I got a couple of one-line, non-committal responses. I definitely knew something was off. I replayed the time we spent together in my head. Sure, I’d picked up that he was maybe not totally on board with masking during COVID, but COVID threw all of us a curve ball.

Monday morning, I received this text:

“It was pretty off putting the other night to hear you talk negatively about your friend for not having us wear masks event though we had all been tested for covid immediately before. I have a family member and quite a few friends that treated me poorly because of my views on covid and the choices I made because of it. At this point in the pandemic I’d think that most people should be able to see all of the nonsense that happened and learn from it. I’m also worried about spike proteins from the vaccinated shedding and I don’t want to expose myself to that. I think you’re a nice person and I enjoyed talking with you but I’m not interested in pursuing this any further. I’m sorry and I wish you the best of luck.”

Ouch. I let that sink in for a minute, and then wrote back:

“Well, I guess we can count something that might have been pretty great as yet another pandemic casualty. For the record, I would never talk negatively about my friend, even if I don’t agree with some of his choices. Nor would I treat you poorly because of yours. It’s too bad we can’t just agree to disagree. But if you need someone whose views always align with yours, I understand. Good luck to you as well.”

Did he get my message? I have no idea. He could have blocked my number immediately after he sent his, for all I know.

My friends all said the same thing, in different ways. “Dodged a bullet!” “What a kook.” “His loss.” “Glad his stupid didn’t shed off on you.” “I’m going to slash the tires on his residence.” You know, the usual.

They are all right, of course, but that’s not the point. Now I’m mourning a small loss. I really liked this guy. I liked his voice, his responsiveness, his willingness to share pictures and words with me. I liked his face, I liked his flaws, I liked our shared interests. It just felt like something that was on a steep upward trajectory on the graph of liking people was abruptly severed to flatline. It’s like dropping from a moderate height and knocking the wind out of yourself when you land on your back.

I feel like some people have become deeply entrenched in their views on COVID and the pandemic in general. Perhaps because I’m a jaded archaeologist, I view the whole thing as yet another exercise in basic human failure, with an opportunity for advancement. The Black Plague killed as many as 200 million people and taught us about quarantining. The Spanish Influenza may have killed as many as 100 million, taught us that the flu is a virus and not a bacterium, and a vaccine was developed.

The point is that this has happened before, and yet the amount of misinformation and misunderstood information that swirled around the first year of the pandemic made humanity look like noobs. We have the technology today. We have the communication methods today. We have very fast transportation. We have all of the ways that we could disperse information and dispense medication quickly and easily, but we didn’t have a good plan. With all of those advancements, we still had nearly 7 million deaths.

Way too many.

To make things worse, in the case of the United States, we had a perverted, moronic, narcissistic Cheeto in office.

Anyway, I think that the pandemic scared all of us to our core, and we picked our lines and stuck to them. My line was vaccinations and masks, because I’m a scientist and I believe in the method. Other people chose to put their lives into their god’s hands. And others walked a line between vaccinating and masking that ranged from conservative to cavalier. Some were downright angry, drinking in the words of the far right like some befouled nectar, shouting in Wal-Marts about refusing to wear masks and threatening people who did with bodily harm.

I realize as I’m writing this that it’s the first time I’ve talked about the pandemic at all. Maybe it’s something I should have done long ago, but maybe it’s also best done when the COVID scare is largely in the rear-view mirror. I can look at it with less knee-jerk emotion now. Maybe some people still can’t do that. Maybe my date was one of those.

I’m saddened by the loss of a potential friend and partner. I’m annoyed that he thought I was so intolerant that I couldn’t incorporate his opinion and talk about all of it. When I dug a little deeper, though, in the days following his dismissal of me, I realized that I was not the intolerant one. He was. So good riddance, dude. May you find your unvaccinated dream date.