But if you aren’t sure about what you are gathering you can by Eastern White Pine needles for tea online. Here is one spot.
https://www.etsy.com/market/white_pine_needle_tea
Haha, Etsy was exactly where I was looking before! So eastern white pine is safe after all? It was hard to find any that didn’t cost quite a lot, as I recall, if you were buying in any significant bulk quantity.
As I said, I don’t have too much cause for concern, personally. I do genuinely feel for those here who are in the minority, or unjabbed and all alone, in their groups or families. That has to be exceedingly disconcerting and worrying. But we’re fortunate in that respect. Sure, we are concerned about quite a few vaxxed folks we know, but we don’t have occasion to spend any significant time in very close quarters with them. (And our church sanctuary is big and spacious. LOL)
My husband, his and my closest friends (and their offspring), and even my closest relative, are steadfastly in the unjabbed camp. I realize this could be a vastly different scenario if we’d had children (who had in turn had families of their own), or if our parents were still alive. But we’ve been mostly just flocking together with birds of a feather, at this point.