It’s true. We all want to be first. We do not want to be last. There is a Fear of Missing Out (FOMO). And certainly there is a sense of being tired of doing what we’re doing. That’s four reasons why we are “opening” before the tipping point has actually arrived.

Of course, there isn’t only one tipping point. But the one we’ve been looking forward to—when the population can be deemed “safe”— is coming fast. One related tipping point should happen today: when a majority of adults will be fully vaccinated in the United States. This is the tipping point I’m most interested in.

As we begin trying to figure out how to work in the world as individuals, we are about to enter a time in which a majority of adults will be able to achieve normalish. And this will no doubt tip the scales.

The change is likely to be subtle but deeply significant. Without being too crass about it: people are about to stop caring.

I don’t mean it in the general sense. We won’t have rampant sociopathy. But when we pass the tipping point, the focus will flip and bring us into a new paradigm.

The pandemic paradigm for the majority of the population has been to protect the most vulnerable. We wear masks, social distance, limit our time inside, and make direct contributions to the people doing the work in our community, even if it means tipping the delivery person well.

Changing mask habits isn’t simply about “the science”.

This follows a change in that very paradigm.

By saying the vaccinated no longer have to mask for the protection of others, we are changing the paradigm from protecting the minority through majority behavior to one in which the minority will soon be left unprotected.

There are very real justifications for why the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has made this move, but that is actually beside the point. They made that decision in anticipation of reaching this very tipping point. That tipping point we will be arriving at this week.

And now that the majority will be vaccinated, we are likely to be exercising that authority.

Stephen Colbert announced the first live, full studio audience in New York City will be in three weeks. To be there, you will need to be vaccinated.

We can expect the conversation about vaccine passports will not only continue, but will expand. It is not simply because the vaccine will be an individual’s ticket to normal.

Not being vaccinated was the default. Now, vaccinated will be the default.

Choosing to not vaccinate when you can, will become a liability few of us will entertain. Particularly with our children.

This will have significant ramifications for all our public spaces.

A Mixed Space

Right now, there are many of us living in a mixed space, between the two paradigms. And unlike Broadway or network TV, we can’t exclude the unvaccinated. But as the new paradigm begins to replace the old, the pressure to shrink the exceptions will be unavoidable. We will be tempted to create twin realities.

At the same time, there is no reason we must jump the gun on replacing the paradigms so quickly. It is coming, regardless of what we do. And we must plan for it. But the tipping point is only now arriving. The transition is only now beginning.

There is absolute certainty that most of us will be doing all the things we love by this time next year. There is absolutely nothing up for debate about that. The actual debate, the one we’re far more afraid to tackle, is whether those activities include the unvaccinated, including our children.

And for some of us, there is no debate.