[NovemberWhiskey]

>The required reserve amount was reduced to zero at the beginning of the pandemic as a way to increase the velocity of money.

No; again. The Fed moved from a 'scarce reserves' regime for monetary policy to an 'ample reserves' regime; that was announced in 2019. Since the 'ample reserves' approach doesn't depend on bank reserves to implement short-term rate management, there wasn't really a need for an ongoing Fed reserve requirement.

>Bank reserves have obviously dropped year over year since the introduction of this policy, especially as a percentage of M1/M2.

Bank reserves increased hugely from 2019 through the middle of 2021, as you can see from the chart I posted. Although they've dropped somewhat since then, they're still like 75x what they were in say 2007.