In my house, we have a problem. My wife has been vaccinated. I haven’t.

Am I envious? Of course I am. Resentful? Yeah, some of that too. When she came home all cheerful after her second COVID-19 vaccine shot last week, I couldn’t help feel that she had crossed safely to the other side of a giant chasm, while I remained at the edge of the cliff.

In the U.S., only about 13.6% of the population has received at least one COVID-19 vaccine shot, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That’s about 1 in 8 of us.

That’s not good. It’s a recipe for a two-tiered society, in which some people are officially permitted a return to a normality that remains forbidden to the rest of us.

IBM is developing a “digital health pass” that would allow people to present proof of vaccination to be admitted to sports arenas, airplanes or workplaces.

I’m not saying this new bifurcated, “your-papers-please” society doesn’t make some sense. If it is ultimately shown that vaccinated people really can’t pass the virus on to others (which is not certain yet), then why wouldn’t we allow them greater freedom to reenter the world?

Sure, people are being told for the moment that even after they get their shots, they should continue to social distance and keep those masks on. Dr. Anthony Fauci himself said it is possible Americans will be wearing masks into 2022. And, yes, there are reasons to fear a resurgence because of new variants that don’t respond as well to the existing vaccines.

But even my 89-year-old father, who is due for his first vaccine shot in a few days, was pretty clear that he saw it as the ultimate game-changer. “Next week,” he told me, “we’ll be safe and can stop worrying and go back to regular life.”

This state of affairs isn’t just dividing husbands and wives, or parents and children. There are divisions also between races, between economic classes and between people born months apart.

And between countries. The share of the population that has been vaccinated in North America and Europe, you might be shocked to learn, is far greater than the share in Asia, Africa and South America. In North America, for instance, there have been 11.9 doses administered per 100 people; in Africa, it’s 0.2 doses per 100.

Experts have expressed concern about “vaccine nationalism,” a scenario in which the wealthy countries of the world hoard the vaccine, leaving the virus to run rampant elsewhere.

And that, of course, is disastrous to all of us, since the virus will continue to mutate wherever it can continue to infect people unchecked, and those new variants won’t respect borders.

The end of this pandemic was always going to be difficult. The battle over masks and social distancing was going to fade away, transformed into a culture war over who gets vaccinated first.

Vaccinated first: teachers but not professors? Sixty-five-year-olds but not 64-year-olds? Who qualifies as an essential worker?

Does asthma count as an underlying condition? How about bone spurs?

It’s all nerve-wracking. No one wants to die at this late stage in the pandemic, when the end seems within sight. You don’t want to get sick because your 65th birthday isn’t until September or because you have to go to work and don’t have time to sit on hold for an appointment.

Of course, I’m glad my wife is protected. But I’m ready for my shots as well.

Nicholas Goldberg is an associate editor and op-ed columnist for the Los Angeles Times.