I can only speak for myself and I'm not in the US but having been raised on a diet of "end of history" era Hollywood stories about the world coming together to

I can only speak for myself and I'm not in the US but having been raised on a diet of "end of history" era Hollywood stories about the world coming together to defeat a common threat, I expected something closer to a war economy than just a bunch of temporary subsidies, conflicting mandates and half-assed lockdowns that ultimatel fizzled out before even the lower bound of vaccination for what the scientists said would be required for herd immunity was met. Instead we saw countries stepping over each other to buy last minute supplies from China because they had eliminated their stockpiles for "efficiency", politicians opportunistically demonstrating defiance in order to make a name for themselves and subsidies being tailored to the specific niche interests of major industries while public services were told to exercise "individual responsibility" instead of receiving additional funds. We clapped for the nurses and then went back to cutting the public health budget because the economy was tanking while a few lucky businesses redistributed societal wealth into their pockets. Nobody demonstrated leadership. Anyone who did was kneecapped by opportunists. Even the EU couldn't commit to a joint plan without having individual member states decide they're special and allowed to do backroom deals to break the same rules they just agreed to. The only thing any politician could agree on was that the economy had to "keep running" at any cost. What did I expect? I don't know, to be honest. But I expected something more coherent and closer to the lies we were told about the state and what it is good for. But what shocked me more is how after the mask came off and revealed that it's all always been false advertising, we simply went back to normal. But this already happened before, e.g. after the Wikileaks and Snowden revelations. I shouldn't be surprised that people prefer to forget.