That’s an unfair statement. The powers that be need to be motivated and stuff gets done.

Northeast states like NY, NJ, CT, Mass were able to mobilize after the initial crisis and rapidly hired and got systems in place to do contact tracing.

In the south, you have the conflict between municipal and county authorities managing the crisis on the ground while the obsequious governors are busy sucking up.

It’s depressing that the tragedy of what happened in April didn’t result in more intelligent actions in other places based in the lessons learned.

It seems to me that it's probably a money issue. States can't run deficits and the Federal government hasn't stepped up to backstop municipalities, just private corporations. Extend the states an unlimited line of credit from the Treasury for contact tracing and most of the states would probably ramp up.

It might actually be easier to get federal money for unemployment than for contact tracing.

My gold and Bitcoin and debt want this.

My parents who are about to retire do not want this.

There were some recent fixes to it, but we've allowed our phone system to be completely overrun by scams and spam. So we don't even have a trusted line of communication between government and citizens other than mail, which is too slow. Most people have had to just block all unknown numbers.

The only reason for it was because offering spam blocking service was a cash cow for phone companies, so hey lobbied against any effective governance to stop it (finally some was passed in late 2019). If people have an interest in something, the government is barely responsive, it took years and years. Special interests that can pay to lobby for it get their way right away unless there is pretty huge backlash.