I guarantee you regardless of which state of the 50 you're discussing, red/blue/whatever, that people still went to bars, to indoor dining, to parties. In New York the national guard was sent to SUNY Oneonta to forcibly quarantine the entire student body because the administration was unwilling to enforce lockdown.
Also, "communist tactic"? The red scare is still with us but to see that shit on HN is always alarming. If holding people accountable so that they don't sacrifice grandma and the immunocompromised for "the economy" (whose economy? certainly hasn't benefitted me) is necessary then I'll do so gladly. If you don't care for public health or the people around you why should I?
The federal government and most governors didn't do shit. It sounds like you live in one of the few places that tried, and got fucked by the sobering reality that a constant 33-40% of this country can not handle epidemiological outbreaks while we sport a pretty weak central government.
US might have a low death rate because of fancy hospitals and some of the best specialists on the planet — it never needed to infect this many people or kill a million Americans. If COVID is no big deal I don't want to have to "never forget 9/11" or whatever bullshit people refusing to vaccinate or quarantine say.
And for the dig at communism, China's zero-covid policy worked. Westerners can say the numbers are cooked, with a population of 1.4 billion you're not going to hide 1 in 3 getting infected. That's the number in the US as of the end of 2020, 1 in 3. Vietnam's zero COVID policy was also working, until they ended it for the economy. Maybe profit motives are unethical where human lives are concerned? By what calculus do you get to determine which outbreaks are worth the bare minimum of germ theory and which ones we get to sacrifice our families and neighbors to for the economy?
I'll end with the note that there are outcomes beyond death. My boyfriend and I contracted COVID before vaccines were available (he works in healthcare) and he couldn't smell or taste for a year. Made eating very difficult. My grandfather can't walk a block anymore, and hasn't been able to in months, but survived. My coworker started to lose her hair in clumps and was embarrassed to wear a wig, but survived. Personally, as a 23 year old with no comorbidities, who was fit and had no physical issues—I'm still recovering a year later. My run times aren't the same, I have a lot less lung capacity, I developed clinical depression. I lived in Argentina for a time and caught swine flu as a child. I'd easily put this as worse. During the infection even putting on a shirt hurt. I'm happy most people are vaccinated now and unlikely to have severe outcomes, but the risk of exposure was totally unnecessary.