When NFL teams select their draft picks later this month, the beaming players won’t get to pose with commissioner Roger Goodell. Another tradition, the onstage bear hug, is definitely out. Instead, video game behemoth EA Sports will create a “virtual moment” of each player walking on stage and interacting with the commissioner—slightly less dazzling than the original plan to have Goodell read the picks on a floating stage in front of the Bellagio’s iconic fountains.

Either way, there will be no fans on hand to cheer—or, if you’re a New York Jets diehard, boo—their team’s selections since the league nixed its plans to hold the draft publicly. More than 600,000 fans attended last year’s draft over the three days in Nashville, and some expected this year’s spectacle in Las Vegas to top that. “That’s what I’ll miss, seeing the fans’ excitement, and at times disappointment and/or shock,” Trey Wingo, anchor of ESPN’s draft coverage, told me. “That kind of juice is what makes the draft every year.”

President Donald Trump said Saturday that he hopes to have sports fans back in arenas by August, the same month he’ll take the stage at the Republican National Convention in Charlotte, North Carolina. “They want to see basketball and baseball and football and hockey,” he said at a White House briefing. “They want to see their sports. They want to go out onto the golf courses and breathe nice, clean, beautiful fresh air.” But just as Trump’s “beautiful” timeline for opening the U.S. economy on Easter was overly ambitious, it’s hard to see tens of thousands of Americans gathering in the coming months given the rapid spread of coronavirus, a surging death toll, and no immediate vaccine to prevent subsequent outbreaks.

The anticipation for this year’s NFL Draft, scheduled from April 23-25, could be even greater than usual, given that fans have been resigned to watching replays of old games since the major sports leagues suspended play in mid-March. A spokesman for the NFL told me that the league is “still knee-deep in the planning stages of what this year’s draft will look like,” but Wingo said his own preparation for the draft “has not changed at all,” even if the picks will be presented in a different way. “It will be the only live sporting event fans can consume,” Wingo said, “and I think that will really bring a special feel to the night.”

It has never felt so strange to see two people hug, a vestige of an era that ended way back in the bygone days of three weeks ago, a now-forbidden gesture more likely to evoke a wince than any feelings of warmth. Two characters embracing in a movie, a video clip of teammates clutching each other in triumph, a wedding photo showing a radiant couple—it’s all suddenly, weirdly, dated. The COVID-19 pandemic has made anachronisms out of many customs that didn’t warrant a second glance last month; namely, anything that involves physical contact or a breach of the sacred six-feet barrier.

That point was crystallized as I read this past weekend about a 51-year-old woman in my South Dakota hometown who died suddenly from the coronavirus. Her family is now left to grieve in isolation, and wait for a less precarious time to hold a memorial service. The condolences have come in the form of phone calls, but as the widower said: “There’s nothing to replace a hug.”

What becomes of America’s cultural rituals and traditions as hugs, high fives, and handshakes are curbed by social distancing? The presidential race, for one, is now largely confined to the computer screen. Late-night hosts are performing monologues from their homes as movie premieres are postponed. And stadiums sit empty, even as the president calls up sports commissioners in hopes of speeding things along.