> "This is one of those things were compromise to a half way solution doesn't work."
well, we seem to agree that the half-measures here are bad compromises and don't work. but while it's tantalizing to believe we could have eradicated the virus, there was no chance of that given its characteristics, people's natural and wide-ranging behaviors, and the sociopolitical underpinnings of our governments.
the US would never accept hard lockdown, for very good and hard-won reasons, so we're left needing to convince, not force, the populace to take reasonable mitigative measures with the understanding that we're going to have to ride it out. the response from the beginning should have focused on instilling good intuition about infectious diseases, which has the nice by-product of raising trust and people independently implementing real mitigations, rather than manically choreographed safety theater.
the explosion of politically-charged disinformation however, has left people mentally and emotionally exahusted, and struggling to tease apart the effective strategies (modest distancing and avoiding crowded indoor gatherings) from the ineffective (masks everywhere and incessant cleaning). people give up, tune out, and arbitrarily choose the simplest anxiety-quelling option (like wearing masks in public) rather than the harder, but more effective (avoiding large parties).
this is where the failure of leadership manifests, not in failing to institute an unacceptable and likely ineffective authoritarian lockdown.