Over the last 40-some years, Conservatives and Republicans have been incredibly successful at destroying the idea of government which is effective and serves the public. The result is that oppositional defiance and grievance politics are all we have left.
This is what I mean by "grievance politics". This is not true, but "feels" like it it is. If Congress has done "a great job of passing legislation", what were the legislative achievements of the Trump administration? How did that government reduce its role in our lives? How did the government "shrink" in any way, which is supposed to be the Republican promise?
Republicans/Conservatives don't think the government should provide for society in the same way that Democrats/Liberals do. It's why Republicans politicized wearing a mask and now vaccination, because it's the government doing things. More importantly, telling them to do things. It's why Republicans universally obstruct the progress of the Democrats (see Mitch McConnell not filling a Supreme Court seat) but the reverse isn't generally true. Republicans don't want to pass much of anything, and many Democrats vote for the things they do.
Ultimately, it doesn't matter who is blamed for corruption and incompetence, it still serves to further the idea that government shouldn't do anything. That's not an option when there's a disease ripping though society, which is why the reaction against vaccination and masking is so strong. It's directly challenging the idea that government and society can be effective at solving a problem if we work together. The Jeffersonian ideal of a weak government presiding over a agrarian society is outdated and not a meaningful model for modern society.
Yes it is an option, always. Government always has the option to do nothing and leave people to their own decisions. There is no objective truth that this should ever have been any kind of government issue at all.
If you use an emergency to justify expanding government power, what you get is a perpetual emergency.
Government doing nothing doesn't just leave us to our own decisions, it makes us more vulnerable to the decisions of others. You could even argue that the whole point of a government is to limit the impact that my decisions have on you, and vice versa.