My pay would be great if I weren't isolating at home with Covid that I got at my banquet job where no one is required by the state to wear masks any more.
Instead I'm missing the start of my working season, and most social safety nets designed to help people in my position cope with the loss of hours have been kneecapped or removed totally because, dontcha know, Covid is over now!
I'm gonna die mad that America's rulers took one look at the invisible disease which may be spread by the asymptomatic and, rather than organizing a societal reaction, painted it as an issue of personal responsibility; your responsibility to wear a mask or not, your responsibility to stop going out for groceries or not, your responsibility to get vaccinated or not, your responsibility to call work and explain that your scratchy throat could be allergies but could also be Covid and you need to wait for test results before getting scheduled, etc. The whole while, the Fed abdicated quarantine duties to the states, but then turned around and threatened to sue them if they interfered with interstate commerce (which, to be fair, is the exclusive domain of the Fed, as per the Constitution, but which they chose not to act on).
These individualized solutions wouldn't be enough for most people even if they did err on the side of caution; more often, they create situations like the one I had at my last event, where the venue organizer was coughing and maskless and going "oh don't worry it's just allergies." I'm not especially mad at her— besides wearing a mask, what's she supposed to do? Take 5 days off after every event to wait for symptoms? Call in sick and get tested every time she wakes up with a stuffy nose? If I did that, I doubt I'd still be employed, and my first day of symptoms was indistinguishable from my usual allergy symptoms for this time of year, and taking my allergy pill seemed to deal with it, so I can understand a blasé attitude towards congestion (mask-wearing notwithstanding).
When I called my state's health department to report my positive test, and to get a pin which allows me to anonymously share my test results with others I've come into contact with (via the state-provided contact tracing app, which I voluntarily installed on my phone back in 2020), I had to leave a message; I got called back the next day and told that the number I had called was not responsible for providing those pins (despite being listed as the number to call in the app) and also that I was the first person to contact them regarding the app, full stop.
And this is the response from people who largely agree that Covid is a real problem which exists, a group I'm not even sure is in the majority in my state (and certainly my country).
America has been such a goddamn waste of other people's land.