Anecdotally and scientifically, there’s reason to believe that the most successful dieters — the ones who truly change their habits and keep the most weight off for the longest time — don’t commit themselves to one of those faddish regimens that draw bold red lines through categories of food to be avoided entirely and bright green circles around categories to be embraced. They muddle through meal by meal. They make a series of smart, tailored judgment calls. They traffic in subtlety, nutritionwise.

But they’re not the majority of dieters, at least not in my experience. More of the people I know opt for exacting prescriptions with emphatic permissions and prohibitions. They like the orderliness of that, the clarity. Snack on A. Don’t drink B. No food after 6 p.m. Or no food for 16-hour stretches.

Whether they can actually follow such guidelines is another matter, measured in belt notches and dress sizes. But they want in their eating what so many of us want in all aspects of our lives: uncomplicated instructions, unchanging rules, assurances, predictability.

That’s precisely what the current chapter of the Covid pandemic denies us.

Should we mask or not? It depends on the geographic location, the physical setting, the number of people, the week.

Will the jabs we got save us? In the end, yes: They’ll make an exponentially greater difference than anything else. But for now, the answer has asterisks. There are breakthrough infections, which are mild or asymptomatic in most cases but not in every last one. There are people at greater risk. There are reasons for caution. And there’s a call for booster shots, but how often in the future and how far into it?

In logistical, social and economic terms, the first chapter of Covid was certainly the worst. We were totally shut down. We were utterly freaked out. People couldn’t work, couldn’t see loved ones, couldn’t comprehend how so much had changed so fast. There was a makeshift hospital in Central Park. There were ambulance sirens screaming, day and night, throughout cities from coast to coast.

But in a certain psychological sense, is the current chapter perhaps the most challenging of all? We thought we’d turned the corner, only to learn we hadn’t, and we’re neither isolated nor liberated. Our marching orders are fluid and feel less like orders than like caveats, nudging us not toward obedience but toward wisdom, which is even harder. We’re not being told to suspend all activities as usual, which is a digestible if dire command, but we’re being encouraged to suspend or alter many activities, maybe for the next week, maybe for this whole month, maybe not for the following one but maybe again in November, when the mercury dips, we head indoors and Thanksgiving waddles into view.

I take absolutely no issue with that. I agree with it. But I also recognize that this shifting, shapeless horizon is at war with a whole lot in human nature and a whole lot in the American psyche, and in this instance, I’m not talking about the individual-liberty part.

I’m talking about the impatience. I’m talking about the certitude and absolutism of the social-media age. We are increasingly a country of either/or, pro/con, virtuous/deplorable, all/nothing. And the pandemic right now can’t be squeezed into any dichotomy. Nor will it be hurried to its end.

It asks that we take fresh stock every few days. That we reshuffle our responses accordingly. It asks us not to be only one way or only the other but to make informed and enlightened decisions dependent on context and to accept that there won’t be a eureka moment, when the clouds lift, the waters part and we’re free. Instead, with an accretion of those informed and enlightened decisions, we’ll proceed, inch by inch, toward a much better but not perfect place.

There are no red and green lights here. There’s just a yellow that flashes … and flashes … and flashes. And that’s not a color that people generally — or Americans specifically — respond to all that well.

-by Frank Bruni, NYTimes