Tales & Trails of a Traveling Wiseguy

I agree the false simplicity of binary thinking is a major challenge. It stripes across just about everything involved in how people deal with Covid. It's a problem unto itself, though. Just because some poor choices people may make in social bubbling are examples of binary thinking does not mean the idea of social bubbling is itself an instance of binary thinking or is even uniquely prone to it. Binary thinking is a challenge to any solution you can construct.

Take your own terminology, "minimising the risk", for example. That shapes thoughts toward binary thinking. Laypeople understand minimizing to mean zero. "I want zero risk" is a common form of binary thinking. As an engineer I understand the concept of minimizing subject to constraints— though I'd have to surmise that's what you meant as you didn't actually say it. And I'll note that elaborating on what "subject to constraints" means would cause the average layperson's eyes to gloss over, as would even having a fulfilling discussion on what an acceptable level of risk is.