How is this a failing? The system is performing well for its stakeholders - maximizing wealth extraction for the upper class, with a simulation of free market choice to keep the middle and lower classes occupied and pacified. From this perspective, a 1% fatality rate should merely translate into the stock market declining by 1%, and then we move on.

Yes! It's also a failure of imagination of the American public. It's like a social safety net DURING A PANDEMIC is just too far outside the Overton window. It's crazy!