The problems this pandemic uncovered run far and wide. It uncovered issues going back fifty years. Some could even argue going back to the very foundational elements of this nation. It is fair to say that nobody in government acted optimally and they are all responsible for unnecessary deaths to varying degrees.

Trump, at least to me, revealed himself as being in a range between incompetent to a moron when it came to effective communication with the public. One of our (sadly) favorite daily events was "Let's see what stupid shit Trump is going to say today". This did not help. This was deadly.

this was made worse by a Democratic party and mass media that chose to be at war with him in the middle of a world-wide pandemic. They were literally trying to eject him from office. How could have have possibly been a good idea at all?

Instead of everyone aligning for the common good they divided further and further, to the detriment of all. I place that blame 100% on the hands of the Democratic party and 100% on the part of the leftist media who support them blindly. To behave this way in the middle of a pandemic was pure bullshit and people lost their lives because of it. Trump had no control over the war that was being waged against him. Democrats could have (and should have) chosen to stop with the nonsense and focus on what actually mattered. They wasted our time and resources with impeachment right as this thing was exploding. Love or hate Trump, the truth of the matter is that when you have missiles coming down on your cities your fucking unite, no matter what, or we all die.

The foundational issues exposed by this pandemic were many. At the core, I think, is the reality that the US system of government isn't centralized. The most significant impact of this is that the US President (regardless of who it might be) or the Federal Government cannot, by law tell the states what to do. In other words, the US President cannot mandate mask usage, or staying at home, etc. The United States of America is more like a bunch of divided countries, each agreeing to some common frameworks and each telling the other states and the federal government "fuck you, you can't tell me what to do". The pandemic brought that to the forefront full force. Again, to our detriment.

Vaccine distribution is another issue. The federal government cannot mandate how to distribute the vaccine. They can recommend and setup systems, but the states have full autonomy on this front and can't be forced into anything at all.

Yes, amendments can be passed, but they require 2/3 of the House, Senate and State Legislatures to agree. This is difficult during normal times. Given the political war these bodies were fighting at the time, this was impossible.

The structural problems with the US Constitution continue with such issues as an imperfect freedom of the press right that allows the press to lie at will and become political activists in a fight. If you don't agree with this, just imagine a scenario where 95% of the press is 100% aligned with the Right to get a sense of what this nightmare scenario looks like to anyone interested in the truth and balance. We should not allow that to every happen in this country, yet it is exactly what we have today, with the left in full control of a vast portion of the media. Not sure how we fix it. We have to find a way.

This is no different from the right to firearms. We need to fix this shit (speech and firearms), it's crazy.

We also need to purge political ranks with solid term limits. The level of ignorance in Congress is staggering. This is an environment where people who would not make it in the private domain can become millionaires and have decades-long careers by simply pandering for votes. It's sick and we are all paying for the consequences of this travesty. The only system that has proven to deliver results in the private domain ought to somehow be adapted to government: Meritocracy, performance, results, delivering on promises, etc.

We have a political system where, every election, politicians tell us how they are going to fix healthcare, education, gun laws, unemployment, immigration and inequality. They have been saying these things for, I don't know, at least fifty years. Republican, Democrat, it doesn't matter. They are all a bunch of pandering incompetent imbeciles who have somehow managed to stay in power while driving this nation backwards. We need term limits and we need a merit-based system that rewards actual performance, not lies and manipulation.

The pandemic was the perfect storm that exposed just how fucked we are. If people don't wake up and fix this by voting intelligently and applying political pressure nothing will change and it will only get better. I mean, look at where we are now. This is hardly evidence of long term competence.