[detaro]

First wave went well (probably in good part to dumb luck, but also because stuff just got done and less arguing about it), this made people somewhat complacent, second and third wave has been a shitshow of not wanting to be unpopular by locking things down and thus ignoring predictions, do last-minute changes when it's too late, apologizing for getting it wrong just to immediately repeat the same pattern, keeping things in an unstable and unsustainable situation for the past few months with no long-term planning (which also means the options are worse, because options that would have required long-term preparing aren't available and the available ones are badly thought out). Picking of random "target points" without apparent consideration what those actually mean outside of being some number that was compromised on and thus is now the benchmark. Way too much political manouvering with politicians pushing for "a common approach", agreeing with everyone on one, loudly announcing it, going back to their state and doing something entirely different. This dragged-out state with constant (but in many ways meaningless for many peoples experience) changes just drags on everyone while at the same time doing a bad job at keeping covid at bay.

EDIT: Random examples: lockdown laws that fail trivial legal challenges because they were made up last minute. Almost religious clinging to the belief that kids in school aren't a relevant factor (to the point of states suppressing evidence to the contrary) which lead to too little investment into teaching infrastructure and options, making each switch between kids in schools and not unnecessary last minute and painful to implement. Unnecessarily messy signup/notification processes for vaccinations (who would have thought one might need a plan to vaccinate people at some point...). Late adjustment of financial help schemes. Nonsensical and inefficient schemes to e.g. distribute masks.