[ghaff]

Pretending that the federal government played no role in guiding the actions of private entities is disingenuous at best. I actually have no problems with such actions given what was known at the time. But the fact that the federal government didn't directly put these sorts of requirements in place is largely beside the point.

There were also travel restrictions at the state level. As I recall, at one point I could only travel from MA to NH for medical-related reasons (probably some other exceptions too and it's not like your papers were being checked at the border.) ADDED: As someone else noted, there were lots of restrictions traveling to Hawaii.

Lots of people were feeling their way in the dark. I attended an event at the beginning of March before everything went crazy in the US. (An event right after was canceled. Seemed like an overreaction; it wasn't.) We were all washing our hands and elbow-bumping but nothing else.

[lesuorac]

> Pretending that the federal government played no role in guiding the actions of private entities is disingenuous at best.

And what would conflating State & Private action with Federal actions be?

This is literally what this thread is about. People are having backlash against the federal government for actions the federal government did not do. Even Republican lead states like Florida had travel restrictions [1] (keep in mind, Trump was president in 2020 when these restrictions were enacted).

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_pandemic_in_Florida

[Izkata]

The OSHA mandate was federal level: https://www.cnbc.com/2022/01/25/covid-vaccine-mandate-osha-w...

Most people don't seem to know about it because it never officially went into effect, but to get there it had to be struck down in courts twice and Biden was telling employers to voluntarily do it because of the appeal. Plenty were in preparation for it going into effect.