The solution is obvious and clear, but impossible under capitalism.

There was a window for agitation in the US, and we used it, sometimes successfully. That window existed because liberals could be rallied against Trump to do local politics things against liberals.

Then Biden was elected and everything was fine again and criticizing the government was gauche or naive again.

But at the heart at all of it is real estate and failing businesses. Real estate taxes make up huge amounts of local and state budgets. Lockdowns disrupt rent payments as well as the overall resale profitability of real estate. Failing businesses have a similar situation regarding tax bases and also directly employ people. Local and state governments are the ones that stopped doing lockdowns, they crunched the numbers and listened to their real constituents (capitalists) and halted lockdowns, which were always incredibly weak ones in the US, way back in 2020.

In order to reinstitute a lockdiwn, you'll need one of two things:

• A completely different material base for government, i.e. the abolition of capitalism itself (or at least a dotp situation).

• A new variant or pandemic that forces a lockdown because it's a greater threat to short term profits.