It’s also worth noting that the latest CDC guidance is an ever-more-complex tangle of options, and wild-card plays. For example, after five days, you have the option to go into the world (masked) but keep testing; if your test comes up negative sooner than day 10, you can remove your mask. But if COVID symptoms pop back up after five days, you need to go back into isolation, and restart the countdown clock to day zero. Also, none of this is relevant if you have shortness of breath: in that case, you should isolate for the full 10 days. At that point you might also need to distinguish between shortness of breath due to light panic from all the instructions, versus COVID itself.

The messaging here should perhaps just be: “You need to try to isolate for 10 days, unless you have a specific exception,” in big neon letters. Maybe, on a personal level, these exceptions could include flying home from a foreign country (people are doing it). Still, your boss should not be able to require you to clock back into work before then.

Even if they seem to be a mess of choices, not everyone hates the spirit of the new CDC guidelines. Amesh Adalja, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, told the New York Times that the new set of guidance, which also removes quarentine periods if you’re exposed to the virus, is “a welcome change.” Jennifer Nuzzo, an epidemiologist, wrote on Twitter: “I’m sure there will be protest about this, but these revised guidelines seem to track with how people are actually living in the face of a virus that 1) is not disappearing and 2) seems to be finding even the most cautious among us.” If COVID is going to keep spreading anyway, why should the government-suggested burden be on individuals to keep it from spreading, even when they are infected?