I feel you, I really do, but it has it's place. Quite often you really do want to execute multiple different things in the background and wait for all of them to return before proceeding.

In pseudocode:

   1. var logResults = Background writeLogServiceStarted()  // Sent to different machine
   2. var authoResults = Background performAuthorisation()  // Perform by 3rd party
   3. var userSettings = Background getUserSettings(request.currentUser) // Stored in DB
   4. var results = Background executeQuery(request.query, authoResults) // Different DB
   5. var response = Background generateResponse(results, userSettings)
   6. wait (logResults, response)
   7. transmitResponse (response)

The current async/await solution doesn't really make this as clear as the above though: The code is littered with some form of unwrapping/wrapping at every step hiding the actual intention, the call stack is marked as async making it hard to figure out where and when a sync function can make a call, etc.