I watched the government hamstring itself in response to covid. masks were mandatory unless you didn't want to, vaccines were mandatory except for this one because something about this one in particular is special (the answer, of course, is that conservative babies threw an extra big fit about this one). i watched government officials claim that if a pregnant woman takes the vaccine her baby will be born with a full head of hair, a full set of teeth and eyes that are black from corner to corner. I watched them tell us to stay home, but we have to go to work, and we have to go out and support small businesses, but then we have to go right back home. I watched government officials say that the key to getting the numbers down is to test less, and tell people not to report their positive tests.

But I think the thing that gets me the most, the thing that has eroded my trust in government as an entity able to organize and manage a population rather than just in the bad actors that were in place during covid, is that IT'S STILL FUCKING HAPPENING. The answer to "How did the government handle the pandemic?" is "They haven't yet." We just did covid exactly the same way we did Vietnam: we realized that it's expensive and people don't like it, so we gave up and declared victory.