Official Washington has it better than most. Many of us are still gainfully employed, riding out the coronavirus in our well-appointed urban townhomes and suburban McMansions as we hop from one Zoom videoconference meeting to the next in service of politicians, lobbying clients, and news editors. But for a town built on eye contact and a firm handshake, the pandemic-induced shutdown of America’s $20 trillion economy has been a real culture shock.

“What the fuck am I supposed to do now? I’m wearing out my phone checking in with people. I miss my casual friends I see after lunch at Joe’s,” a government relations executive told me recently, referring to Joe’s Seafood, Prime Steak & Stone Crab, situated in an old bank building just a stone’s throw from the White House, his favorite downtown D.C. watering hole for engaging in the kind of high-powered socializing that is the lifeblood of his business.

In the District, Maryland, and Virginia combined, the number of COVID-19 cases stands at more than 21,500. D.C. schools will remain closed for the rest of the school year, and lessons will end three weeks early, Mayor Muriel Bowser announced on Friday. Considering the fraught situation close to home, plus the more than 22 million Americans filing for unemployment aid since mid-March, and a death toll that’s still steadily climbing, the lamentations of the Washington elite may seem trite. But in D.C. perhaps more than anywhere else, derailing social interaction means a fundamental reworking of politics as usual. Right now, millions of Americans are looking to Washington for answers—answers for a public health crisis that has afflicted more than 700,000 and killed more than 40,000, answers for picking up the pieces of a fractured economy once it’s all over. And so much of what the federal government comes up with in the way of solutions depends on the business of politics.

That is fueled by whether the players at every level, from K Street, to Congress, to the White House, trust each other. As George P. Shultz, one of only two people to hold four different cabinet positions under multiple presidents, told me a few years back in an interview for the Washington Examiner when I asked what he viewed as central to effective, results-oriented governing: “Trust is the coin of the realm.” The existence of that trust, in a town that many Americans dismiss as a superficial swamp, is based largely on interpersonal relationships that take years to cultivate.

In an industry where practically everyone has a competing objective, even people who work together, even some who are married to one another, those relationships are best nurtured in person, with eye contact and a handshake, while throwing back overpriced liquor, in the shadow of ridiculously priced seafood towers and under the weight of bank-breaking bone-in ribeye steaks, at (name your favorite power spot; I have mine).

“Washington is a very small town, with people who have known each other for years, if not decades,” said a veteran Republican lobbyist, explaining that the worst time to make a friend in D.C. is “when you need something.” This operative emphasized that “it is always a good idea to develop relationships long before you’ll need to utilize them.”

It’s hard to describe to the casual observer how elemental personal connections are to the people who work here—so much so that on a recent Thursday evening a couple of weeks into sheltering at home, I found myself succumbing to what might previously have seemed like the act of a desperate agoraphobic: the Zoom happy hour. Sidling up to my usual spot at the dining room table of my Capitol Hill row home, Jefferson’s Reserve at hand, I joined a video call organized by the government relations executive who, as previously discussed, would much rather have been at his usual perch at Joe’s. About a dozen or so political professionals—lobbyists, congressional aides, campaign strategists—came and went over the next hour.

There we were, a motley crew of corona-beards, baseball caps, messy rooms in the background, and a lot of chirping kids. Initially, the conversation was stilted. Our host had to prod us with topics the way a talk radio personality uses controversial news items to motivate listeners to call in and sound off. But we grew more comfortable as we acclimated and downed a few drinks, and the discussion flowed more easily from one yellow-framed box to the next.

Still, it was a cheap replacement for a traditional D.C. happy hour. There were no side conversations or trading of proprietary political intel that can make evenings like this both a social and professional success. Rather the gossip, if you can call it that, was more confessional about the disarray of trying to work while homeschooling and missing the rhythms of normal life. As bizarre and clunky as it felt, we were so hungry for interaction, the consensus was to repeat the exercise every Thursday evening, indefinitely.

Since the country went virtual in mid-March, video conferencing has become the preferred method of a lot of Washington operatives who probably thought of it as a way for their out-of-town parents to see the grandkids. The exercise has become rote in part because even though the streets of the nation’s capital resemble a ghost town, those who work in politics and government are as busy as they have ever been.

Donald Trump and Congress have collaborated, haltingly, to rescue an economy in a COVID-19-induced free fall, with yet another relief package now under discussion. The Federal Reserve has already injected trillions of dollars to keep the gears of the financial system churning. The fresh cash, and the dire circumstances facing many industries and small businesses if they don’t get a piece of it, have combined to create in some cases a seven-day week of 16-hour days for lobbyists, who are fielding calls from anxious clients hoping to secure their share.

A veteran Democratic lobbyist whose Washington career began on Capitol Hill said that, for years, he subscribed to the theory that getting face time—real, not virtual—was critical to ferreting out information and convincing lawmakers and key staff to be attentive to his clients’ issues. “Now, I realize I was right,” he said. “It’s hard enough when you can be up there to run into people to find out what’s happening. When you can’t do that, and it’s all based on phones and emails, it’s hard to get intel.”

Then, there’s the matter of the presidential campaign. In less than seven months, Americans head to the polls (or their mailboxes) to decide whether to grant Trump another term or hand the nuclear football over to Joe Biden. While the president rolls out hours and hours of daily virtual programming—“They’re going to expand that and create Trump TV,” Democratic strategist Dane Strother told me admiringly for the Washington Examiner—Biden is doing his best to assemble a campaign that can rival Trump’s. In perhaps the ultimate social concession to coronavirus, he has been holding virtual fundraisers. For donors, the whole point of these rubber-chicken events is face time with the presumptive nominee. Even the politically connected who yearn for proximity to power and high-value human interaction have to settle for video chat.

It’s a sacrifice they’re willing to make, apparently. “Donors are very egotistical,” a Democratic strategist who has worked on presidential campaigns said. “A lot of times, they want the ability to say they were somewhere, or have the ear of the candidate, or have direct access to staff. So even though it’s moved online, there’s still that exclusivity about it. Donors live for that.”

David M. Drucker is a senior correspondent for the Washington Examiner.

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