��������

Like it or not, the choose-your-own-adventure period of the pandemic is upon us.

Mask mandates have fallen. Some free testing sites have closed. Whatever parts of the United States were still trying to collectively quell the pandemic have largely turned their focus away from communitywide advice.

Now, even as case numbers begin to climb again and more infections go unreported, the onus has fallen on individual Americans to decide how much risk they and their neighbors face from the coronavirus — and what, if anything, to do about it.

For many people, the threats posed by COVID have eased dramatically over the two years of the pandemic. Vaccines slash the risk of being hospitalized or dying. Powerful new antiviral pills can help keep vulnerable people from deteriorating.

“We’re doing a really terrible job of communicating risk,” said Katelyn Jetelina, a public health researcher at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston. “I think that’s also why people are throwing their hands up in the air and saying, ‘Screw it.’ They’re desperate for some sort of guidance.”

To fill that void, scientists are thinking anew about how to discuss COVID risks. Some researchers are working on tools to compare infection risks to the dangers of a wide range of activities, finding, for instance, that an average 43-year-old vaccinated last year is roughly as likely to be hospitalized from an infection as a bull rider is to be hospitalized after a ride. Others have studied when people could unmask indoors if the goal was not only to keep hospitals from being overrun but also to protect immunocompromised people.

But many scientists said they also worried about this latest phase of the pandemic heaping too much of the burden on individuals to make choices about keeping themselves and others safe, especially while the tools for fighting COVID remained beyond some Americans’ reach.