It’s been two years of disrupted daily routines, missed holiday gatherings, lost time with friends, and a near-constant anxiety that freights mundane tasks with weighty decisions.

Should I go to the grocery store Saturday afternoon, or wait until it’s less crowded? Can we take our infant to meet relatives at an indoor family reunion? If it’s OK to eat at a restaurant without a mask, how about a concert?

Through much of 2020, with the pandemic surging and no vaccines in sight, those who took COVID-19 seriously answered these questions the same: Stay home if you can. If you must leave, wear a mask and keep six feet away from everyone else.

But now?

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Vaccines changed the landscape, largely ending for about two-thirds of Americans the possibility that a COVID-19 infection, even in a healthy person, could be life-threatening.

Meanwhile, federal guidelines have changed too many times to count, while local public health departments add their own variations.

Philadelphia demanded proof of vaccination to dine at restaurants for a few weeks before withdrawing the rule, though some restaurants still insist. Across city lines, vaccination cards were never a requirement. On Wednesday, the city ended its indoor masking rule, bringing Philadelphia in line with CDC recommendations that most people no longer need to wear them.

At best, shifting safety messages seem haphazard and contradictory; at worst, they feel arbitrary.

That leaves us largely on our own to figure out what activities are acceptable. And the calculation is different for everyone. Just over half of Americans have completely or mostly returned to their pre-pandemic habits, according to a Washington Post-ABC poll this week, while 41% have barely or not at all resumed normal life. In a highly personalized risk-benefit analysis, we weigh our perceived risk of getting sick against our life circumstances, and our social and emotional needs.

In other words, after two years of COVID-19, what are the things we just can’t do without, that we’re willing to accept some risk to get back?

Five Philadelphia-area residents — all of whom are vaccinated and took all recommended precautions at the beginning of the pandemic — share how their survival strategies have evolved.

Everything came to a screeching halt in the Bednar-Morgan household in March 2020, and little has changed since.

Tomas Bednar and Brianna Morgan, both 36, had planned to sell their South Philadelphia home and move to Washington, D.C., for Bednar’s new job. But with a 4-month-old at home, relocation no longer seemed feasible. Instead, they took up Bednar’s parents’ offer to care for baby George, now 2, while they worked. The arrangement had everyone living out of suitcases as they shuttled between the two houses, staying at each for a few weeks at a time.

“We didn’t even see our neighbors, who have a son who is six weeks older than our son,” said Bednar. “That was our bubble and we lived like that for a long time.”

The bubble popped last summer when the couple enrolled their son in day care. Until then, they’d made decisions based on CDC and Pennsylvania guidelines, but as the pandemic dragged on, the rules became increasingly convoluted.

Bednar, who works in health policy, and Morgan, who is studying for a Ph.D. in nursing, had weighed the risk of potentially exposing George to COVID-19 (case counts were low last summer) against the benefits of socializing a walking-talking-opinion-having toddler.

So much still feels unsafe. They’d love to take George to museums or even to explore a grocery store but don’t feel comfortable exposing him to more people than necessary. Aside from sending George to day care, their family rules about social interaction haven’t changed since the beginning of the pandemic.

“I don’t see a light at the end of the tunnel,” Bednar said. “This is survival mode. … We have no other choice. We have to just keep going.”

When Bednar gets like this, feeling as if he’s at the bottom of an emotional barrel, his wife carries the family. Other times, the roles are reversed.

On weekends, however they’re feeling, the family walk to their favorite playground. They watch George’s face light up as he plays, and life feels a little like normal.

COVID-19 may be subsiding in Philadelphia, but Germán Parodi’s anger about the slack public response to the pandemic hasn’t. Philadelphia ending its vaccine mandate for indoor dining is yet another decision increasing risk for people with disabilities.

“I consider it to be racist and ableist and elitist,” Parodi said. “The people that will be multiply impacted in this city will be poor, Black, brown, and disabled people.”

About two decades ago, Parodi was shot in a carjacking in Puerto Rico, causing a spinal injury that has him using a wheelchair. Last year he developed a serious bladder infection and an irregular heartbeat. He hasn’t gone to follow-up doctor appointments to investigate either, though, because of COVID-19.

“I don’t need to catch COVID, to get sick,” said Parodi, who is 37. “Yes I am boosted. Yes, there are treatments. But the medical system is at capacity, over capacity.”

He and his partner, Shaylin Sluzalis, 26, have largely stayed inside their Juniata Park apartment during the delta and omicron variant waves. Both are disability-rights advocates with Liberty Resources in Philadelphia and work from home. To relax they play video games or watch Netflix or anime.

Before the pandemic, home-health workers helped Parodi dress and bathe. Now, having people come into their home feels too risky. Sluzalis has become not only his romantic partner and coworker but also his caregiver. With this new dynamic, the couple have found they need to be more deliberate in nurturing the romantic side of their relationship. It’s a pandemic challenge neither anticipated.

“I’m attempting to put in more of myself into the relationship,” Parodi said. “And being supportive with effort. If I notice she is not on one of her best days I will be more thoughtful of not being irritable myself.”

Security guards at Philadelphia International Airport like Marilyn Robinson, 60, of North Philadelphia, never stopped going to work, she said. They just went a lot less often. For much of 2020 and 2021, her hours were nearly halved.

“I never had a break in the pandemic,” she said. “It was very difficult. The only reason I made it through was because I had savings, and by the time everything eased up I was at the end of my savings.”

Life is easier now, she said, if only because as of December she’s back to full-time work. Before that, she was terrified that catching COVID could cause her to miss her few days of work at a job that doesn’t provide paid sick leave.

Despite working in person without getting COVID, and being vaccinated and boosted, she is still cautious. Every day she begins work by wiping chairs, desks, and doors with bleach. She does the same at home, and changes out of her work clothes as soon as she walks in the door.

“Just like last week there were five or six coworkers that were sick,” Robinson said. “I’m still wearing my mask, I’m still doing the protective things I need to do.”

She has loosened her vigilance over some things. At Christmas she visited her mother in Greenville, S.C., for the first time since the pandemic began. She’s been going to Atlantic City, too, she said, to walk the Boardwalk and shop. The fear she experienced over the last two years is still with her, though. She recalls SEPTA bus trips when people got angry about putting on masks, and it is on her mind that COVID is still circulating.

“The people that didn’t experience those things didn’t really get what the pandemic was,” Robinson said. “I was exposed.”

Craig Williams, a retired banker from Cheltenham, is headed for Las Vegas. He’s looking forward to the trip — a family member’s birthday celebration — because it’s been so long since he felt comfortable going much of anywhere.

“There’s this wee bit of apprehension,” he said. “OK, you have to be careful. Don’t let your guard down. Don’t get too loosey-goosey.”

Until he got vaccinated last year, Williams, 70, limited his public outings to necessities, such as doctor’s appointments and grocery shopping.

Since then, “I’m learning how to live with it and I will maybe get a little more comfortable,” he said.

Emphasis on “a little.”

Williams now enjoys cheering at his grandson’s indoor hockey games (while wearing a mask) but has yet to resume the in-person exercise classes he enjoyed before the pandemic. Instead he follows along with the virtual classes held by his Germantown gym, Fergie’s Instructional Training FIT.

Weddings — really, any large gathering of people whose vaccination status is unknown — still feel unsafe. Yet he recently attended the funeral of a good friend’s mother.

“For me it’s about valuing the relationship with the person,” Williams said.

Whatever risk there is in sitting at an indoor hockey game is worthwhile to support his grandson, while attending an in-person exercise class seems like an unnecessary risk, since there are other options for staying active.

As for the funeral, Williams said he decided to go because the friend whose mother died was sick and unable to attend.

“I said, well that means I definitely have to go,” Williams said. “I described the ceremony to him, and it was important to him. He was grateful.”

On a Thursday night at Dock Street Brewery, Johnny Nottingham was in his element after a rocky two years, tasking teams huddled around beer and pizza to list the middle names of presidents or identify the innovation that changed photography in 1948. (Answer: the Polaroid camera).

Just a few groups competed that night. Pre-pandemic, low participation would have been a source of angst for the host, who as Johnny Goodtimes has been emceeing quizzo games at bars and restaurants since 2002.

“Things that would have upset me two years ago are just so minor now after everything we’ve been through,” he said.

For Nottingham, 47, of Graduate Hospital, the pandemic is pretty much over. He’s had two primary vaccine shots and a booster. He, his wife, and son developed COVID-19 symptoms the day after Christmas 2021 and recovered fine. He’s thrilled that, after the omicron surge, people are going out again.

He exclusively ran virtual quizzo games in 2020, but it wasn’t the same. He works best when there’s a live crowd.

“You can’t recapture that on Zoom,” he said.

When the city ended the vaccine mandate for indoor dining, Nottingham wasn’t concerned, mostly because he’s already had COVID.

He is keeping a few cautions, though. His 71-year-old mother lives on Virginia’s Eastern Shore and is immunocompromised, so he takes a COVID test before visiting her, and limits his exposure to others. And he’s felt a twinge of anxiety when attending games at the Wells Fargo Center.

“You almost have to train yourself to not be stressed,” Nottingham said. “Your brain’s gotten so used to it over the past two years that you see all those people and think, ‘Oh no!’”

He’s ready to move on from the pandemic.

“I’m so thankful we’ve, knock on wood, made it through this scary thing so far,” Nottingham said, “with our health and our freakin’ sanity.”

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