the pandemic response was fucked. trump failed catastrophically. biden failed catastrophically. covid is now endemic. it is not past tense.

more than that, the whole field of epidemiology and study of infectious diseases is now polarized; like 30% of the country is actively opposed to the very concept of public health measures now.

we did not recover. trump could have saved us with a fast and severe response, calling for immediate quarantines, saying to compartmentalize your social groups-maybe on the level of your office or your church to limit contagion, talking up the vaccine research he’d authorized, and wearing a mask in public whenever he could so his followers would take lead. he did the opposite of all those things. biden could have saved us by buckling down, keeping drug companies for taking profit from tax funded research, and making some hard decisions on sacrificing to do a big international aid push, quarantining, etc.

neither of them did those things. both of them had a responsibility to. fuck those guys.