How to make good enough choices during the coronavirus pandemic, since making risk-free decisions is impossible

• As states begin to reopen, many people are weighing the risks of new activities, like going to the beach, on top of old ones, like touching doorknobs.
• Unfortunately, there's no such thing as risk-free, and the changing and stress-inducing nature of the pandemic makes decision-making even harder.
• But there are ways to make good-enough decisions without obsessing over every pro and con, which will exhaust you and lead to poor choices.
• Understand the general principles that make something high versus low risk, weigh your values, and set boundaries around your news consumption and decision making.

The Fourth of July is a big deal for the Thomas family — they all meet up at the Jersey shore each year.

But this summer, they're not sure it should happen. On the one hand, given the grandparents' age and health status, it could be the last time the whole family gets together this way, and the event brings them joy. On the other, elderly family members are especially vulnerable to COVID-19. Plus, one couple has a newborn and another is pregnant; the risks for them are unclear.

"No one's sure what the right thing is to do," Kelly Thomas, a lawyer in New York City, told Insider.

As states begin to open restaurants, beaches, and workplaces to varying degrees, many people like Thomas are asking themselves new questions about what's safe: Go to the family gathering or settle for Zoom? Send kids back to preschool or keep them home? (That, of course, comes on top of the tough decisions that are now old-hat — order delivery or brave the grocery store?)

Unfortunately, nothing is 100% risk-free, and what experts know continues to change. Throw in evolving and false information, humans' propensity for cognitive error, and the judgment-clouding stress of living through a pandemic, and day-to-day life gets exhausting fast.

That won't end any time soon.

But infectious-disease and psychology experts agree on a few effective ways to assess risk and make good-enough decisions without going mad.

First, understand the factors that distinguish low- and high-risk situations

The first step is to understand the general principles that make something high- or low-risk.

"This virus really likes people being indoors in an enclosed space for prolonged periods of close face-to-face contact," William Schaffner, an infectious-disease expert at Vanderbilt University, previously told Insider.

That's because the coronavirus typically spreads via droplets that jump up to 6 feet between people.

So it's not surprising that your risk of infection is probably lower outside than indoors. One preliminary report from scientists in Japan (which has not been peer-reviewed) suggested that the odds that an infected person "transmitted COVID-19 in a closed environment was 18.7 times greater compared to an open-air environment."

Still, that doesn't mean people can safely congregate in the park or on the beach. No matter where you are, everyone should stay at least 6 feet apart.

According to Schaffner, the most important thing to consider when evaluating an activity or a place is how well you can social distance.

He also recommends checking whether patrons and staff at stores and restaurants are wearing masks. If they're not, go somewhere else.

Another factor is how well ventilated a space is. Scientists still aren't certain to what degree a cloud of tiny coronavirus particles — known as aerosols — can linger in the air and infect the next person who walks by. But research has suggested that more live viral particles are found in the air in enclosed rooms with little airflow.

That could make elevators and offices risky.

Lastly, Schaffner suggests minimizing how long you spend in an indoor space that's not your home.

The worst coronavirus clusters around the US have been tied to places that force people into close quarters for extended periods, like nursing homes, correctional facilities, and meatpacking plants.

"The farther away you are and the shorter duration of contact between you and other people means you get less efficient virus transmission," Schaffner said.

Then, consider your values and priorities

Once you have a grasp on the practical risks associated with various activities, consider what you value about them rather than what you fear could happen if you pursue them, Julie Pike, a clinical psychologist in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, told Insider.

"Focusing the whole time on what could happen to us during the activity defeats the purpose," she said. "Instead, focus on why you are leaving the house — for example, 'I am seeing my parents because I value our relationship and being connected with my family.'"

Haley Neidich, a therapist in Saint Petersburg, Florida, said she and her husband took that approach when considering whether to see her sister and brother-in-law, who live three blocks away. Pre-coronavirus, they saw each other at least every other day.

After five weeks working from home while caring for a toddler, Neidich and her husband had had it. The four adults compared their definitions of social distancing, and agreed to see each other but to otherwise only leave their houses for essential trips. While not all states and counties support this sort of isolation-cell setup, ultimately, the family felt the benefits to their mental health were worth it.

"I just cannot tell you the positive impact it has had for all of us," Neidich told Insider.

Make the small choices habits to beat decision fatigue

While some decisions like what to do for July 4th are only made once, others like whether to wear a mask happen daily. If you exhaust yourself with the more minor ones, you'll have less mental capacity for the bigger ones, and make worse choices overall.

"We are drawing from a single well, and when you deplete it in one domain there's less left over in another domain," Dr. Mimi Winsberg, a psychiatrist and chief medical officer at the mental health telemedicine service Brightside, told Insider.

Developing routines where you can helps. Maybe Tuesday morning is your grocery day. You wear your mask anywhere you take your wallet. High-touch surfaces are wiped down nightly. No seeing non-family members within 6 feet, period.

"Once we have it down, we don't have to question it," Winsberg said."It's the questioning that causes the fatigue."

Create your own 'fear schedule'

There's still a whole lot experts don't know about the coronavirus, and that alone "really messes with us, because we can't run the math on risk, and then there's too many choices and then we get paralyzed," Kate Bowler, an associate professor at Duke Divinity School, recently said on the Happier podcast.

To manage that, every two weeks, she does an in-depth catch-up on the news, talks to trusted medical experts, reevaluates her own personal risk as a cancer survivor, and decides what behaviors to keep or change for the two weeks going forward.

Setting this "fear schedule," as she calls it, allows her to not constantly worry; she simply chooses to be comfortable with a set of decisions for a period of time.

"We have to live with the story of the choices we made," she said. "In the future, something might happen and we didn't know, but we also need to have said, 'We couldn't have known.'''

Bowler's approach to the news aligns with advice from many experts, who recommend limiting your consumption and sticking to a few trusted sources.

While it can seem like information about what's risky changes by the minute, the reality is that "reliable information accumulates very, very slowly," Baruch Fischhoff, a psychologist at Carnegie Mellon University and expert in risk assessment, told Insider. That's especially true for scientific research.

Being glued to every update can also lead to panic-driven decisions based on the latest headline rather than level-headed ones based on the bigger picture.

Plus, getting too deep into the weeds of conflicting data and misinformation can lead to confusion that skews your judgment. "When there are competing narratives and competing information, people are going to lean in the direction of what they wanted to do anyway," Tony Lemieux, a social psychologist at Georgia State University, told Insider.

That, in turn, can lead to "outcome bias," Fischhoff said: when you "judge the quality of the decision by how things turned out, rather than the quality of the thinking that went into it."

Give yourself a break

Ultimately, making decisions during coronavirus 2.0 is going to be imperfect. "There are no safe ways to do things; 'safe' implies something absolute," Schaffner said.

So try to accept risk as non-binary and make peace with a long list of unknowns.

"We've got to go a little easy on ourselves right now to do the best we can, but recognize there's this uncertainty and cloud hanging over that can thwart the best of intentions," Lemieux said. "Give that its due space."