There’s simply no way to get around it: COVID-19 cases are rising exponentially around the country, including in cities like New York and Los Angeles that were particularly hard-hit when the disease first entered the U.S. this spring. Chicago is on lockdown as of Monday, hospitals in Missouri are turning people away, and another school shutdown looms in New York. While all of this horror unfolds, the question we all thought we’d definitively answered in March has returned with a vengeance: What do we do?

In an ideal world, the federal government would take greater responsibility in helping the U.S. stem the tide of COVID-19 infections. Unfortunately, though, we still live in Trump’s America, and even liberal politicians like New York Mayor Bill de Blasio seem more concerned with issuing panicked exhortations on Twitter than shutting down indoor dining or taking any other meaningful steps to protect us.

Once again, Americans find ourselves in the all-too-familiar predicament of expecting more from one another than we can from our elected leaders; it’s maddening, certainly, to feel our every individual choice imbued with so much potential harm, but right now, all we can do is try—haphazardly and imperfectly, if necessary–to keep each other safe.

Right now, keeping ourselves and our communities safe looks different than it did even a few weeks ago. To avoid stigmatizing anyone else’s choices, I’ll submit myself as a test case; I’ve been seeing friends, albeit exclusively outdoors and with the benefit of masks and regular COVID-19 testing, since this summer. I’ve eaten in restaurants—always outside, but still—and I’ve gone on dates, even if they always came with readily exchanged negative test results.

Overall, I consider myself a responsible, if occasionally flawed, adaptor to these bizarre times, and a few weeks ago, I would have stood by any of the above choices; after all, we know that masks work, and that outdoors is far safer than indoors in most cases. As the positive rate in my home city of New York climbs toward 3%, though, I’ve once again learned to change my behavior overnight.

Ever since someone in my social orbit tested positive on Monday, the rules I’ve vaguely adhered to for the past five months have solidified and gotten more extensive as my anxiety levels have soared once again. The multi-person backyard hangs I got used to over late summer and early fall are over, at least for now; I’m not sitting down at a bar or restaurant again until New York cases drop significantly, no matter how well-spaced or uncrowded its outdoor-dining setup is; there will be no dates with new people for a while, even if I see a PDF of their negative results beforehand.