Are People Falling in Love With Their Peloton Instructors? Tanner Garrity, provided by FacebookTwitterEmail Last March, just a couple weeks into the pandemic, The Atlanticpublished a piece titled “There Are No New Friends in a Pandemic.” We were quarantine infants at that point, still marveling at days without commutes, still learning a new kind of glossary: R number, remote learning, PPE. A year later, we’re not fully through it, but we’ve all found ways to keep going — mainly by latching onto the friends (and family) we already have. We’ve hosted Zoom game nights, commiserated with coworkers and left apartments behind to quarantine “back home” with close relatives. Many Americans have expanded their pods as the months have dragged on; a survey conducted last July found that 47% of the country was operating in self-monitored bubbles of up to 10 people.