“We’re still learning about what boosters mean, and what they can do,” Saskia Popescu, an infection-prevention expert at George Mason University, in Virginia, told me. She’s gotten a booster, she said, and hasn’t changed her behavior. But on another level—one that’s more emotional, more intuitive, and, let’s face it, more appealing—a different strain of booster logic holds: If two shots gave us so much freedom, shouldn’t a third do the same? Truly, no one knows. “Honestly, I’m confused on this myself,” Whitney Robinson, an epidemiologist at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, told me.

Ford and others are now charting their own post-booster paths, freelancing in the advisory vacuum the government has left behind. Gerald Pao, a biologist, told me that nabbing a booster emboldened him to visit his elderly aunt in Vancouver. Dianne Jennings, in Boston, says that her booster has made her feel ready to take a delayed vacation to see family members in the Midwest, including an unvaccinated cousin. Ace Robinson, an infectious-disease expert in California, boosted his way into a trip to Egypt and a belated birthday party for his 95-year-old grandmother (also boosted). My own mother, who’s 71, told me that she feels like her Moderna booster is her ticket to traveling overseas; she’s also eager to dine indoors and spend more time with her unvaccinated great-nephew, who’s 8. She feels cooped up, she said over the phone: “It’s been too long.”

These booster mavericks aren’t acting unreasonably. (Nothing but respect, Mom.) In those with less robust immunity, additional shots do seem to make a difference, at least for a time: Once boosted, people seem better protected against infection and symptomatic cases of COVID-19, and they might be less likely to pass on the coronavirus. And while many people are eager to push their newly boosted boundaries, none of the dozen or so individuals I spoke with said they were abandoning other measures, including wearing masks.