A friend who works as a public-health researcher was complaining the other day that the various guidelines being issued by state and federal agencies,  supposed to tell us all how to behave during the coronavirus pandemic, seemed vague and general.

Yes, we grasp the concept of social distancing, means, and the meaning of “stay home” is pretty clear, particularly when schools, offices and public gathering places are all shut. But these are broad directives, issued from the metaphorical stratosphere of public policy, and they miss the zillion little details of daily life.

Does “stay home” mean your kids shouldn’t play in the street? That you shouldn’t walk the dog? Is a run or bike ride a bad idea? Are plastic gloves and face masks necessary or pointless, and should you only wear them inside buildings or everywhere? Is the alcohol-based hand sanitizer still necessary if you wash your hands? Do you need to use it after touching a pet, a doorknob, a paper grocery bag? And how should you treat the people you live with: Are you “virally bonded” (a term my daughter used to describe her relation to her housemates in Vermont)? What are the rules when one member of the household goes out? Or feels ill?

Etc., etc. The point is that all these questions, and the thousands more like them, aren’t and can’t be answered by even well-meaning and competent policymakers in federal or state capitols, or even those in local city halls. What the pandemic is highlighting is the wide – and I would argue, widening – gap between life as it appears from 30,000 feet up and as it is actually lived.

I used to run across this in my past life, when I followed economic news pretty closely. I spoke regularly to macroeconomists and financial-market watchers, and many of them were smart, articulate and well-meaning. But their indicators, models and charts existed on a separate plane, miles above the world as most people experience it. A change in the unemployment rate or the rate of growth in gross domestic product might quicken economists’ pulse rates and make headlines in the Wall Street Journal, while passing unnoticed by nearly everyone else.

It works in reverse as well; millions of people can alter their behavior in significant ways — anything from moving to digital entertainment and information to procreating later or less – and it might not register on the dashboards of analysts and policymakers for years.

While fraught with way more anxiety, the current situation reflects a similar disconnect. We listen to macro-statistics about the spread of Covid-19, we listen to what experts say has to happen, society-wide, to slow the spread and prevent an even bigger disaster, and we try to adjust our daily routines to be helpful – but all that we hear from above doesn’t tell us whether we’ll get sick, or how to respond if someone we know does, or how worried we should be about a relative or friend in another city, or …