How to weigh the risk of going out in the coronavirus pandemic, in one chart

Since coronavirus lockdowns began in the US, most Americans have drastically changed their patterns: following instructions to stay home, limiting almost all contact with others, and venturing out only for essential trips and exercise.

As states begin to ease social distancing restrictions, people are beginning to have more options. Between those wanting to patronize newly reopened businesses or socialize in person, and more employers calling people back to work, survey and cellphone data suggests people are already starting to trickle out of their homes.

But for many people, it’s really not clear which kinds of gatherings are safe and which aren’t. And that uncertainty can spark anxiety.

Fortunately, health experts know more about the coronavirus than they did when the lockdowns began, and they can point us to different levels of risk as we begin to reengage. There’s also advice on how to minimize harm.

“There’s been a polarization between two purported options of staying home indefinitely … versus going back to business as usual,” Julia Marcus, an infectious disease epidemiologist at Harvard, told me. “The idea of harm reduction gives us a way of thinking about risk as a continuum and thinking about the middle ground between those two options.”

Marcus and Boston University epidemiologist Eleanor Murray created an infographic showing the different scales of risk. We at Vox were inspired by it and, with Marcus and Murray’s permission, adapted it: