You almost have to follow politicians or news if you wanted to keep up on the vaccine and re-opening front. Following news outlets is about the same in terms of replies.

Well, you could get your news from news sites directly rather than following them on Twitter! Then you're very unlikely to see stupid replies. (But choose news sites that either don't have comments at all or at least hide them by default.)

My Twitter experience isn't nearly as good as it was some years ago, to be sure, but I follow fairly few people outside the "friends of friends" perimeter and rarely follow people who are given to performative outrage, even if they are people I generally agree with. While I do block people occasionally, I'm more free with "mute temporarily", "mute forever" and, importantly, "turn off retweets" -- that can have an almost magically cleansing effect on your timeline.

Following politicians is fine. It's the replies to politicians that are never going to be worthwhile. There's no discussion there, just rants and cheers.