They were? I didn't see any of that, ever.The biggest side effect of the Pandemic and subsequent shut down of most areas of the economy is out of control inflation.
It was the most irresponsible action ever taken - forcing everyone to stay home and let businesses suffer significant, difficult to overcome losses.
So the predictable result was an increase in prices in the years following in an attempt to make up for drastic losses.
Once prices go up, they don't come down again. All sectors of the economy realized that people will pay the prices regardless of how high they get.
As long as business losses were within reasonable limits, capitalism was working. But once the balance was thrown off, capitalism has to scramble to make up for the losses.
The socialists in this country were celebrating the downfall of the capitalist system. Suddenly you can't find workers because people can no longer live on wages that were once sustainable for both employer and employee.
I freaked out when I first saw the mandates (in the name of protecting public health) that kept people from patronizing businesses on a regular basis which had long sustained those businesses.
I did see businesses greedily take advantage of the customers' inability to shop around and raise their prices -- and keep on raising them, just because they found out they could.
Experts warned that the stimulus checks would throw things off, so I think that might have been part of it.
I wouldn't call our governors irresponsible for shutting things down. They thought human lives were more important than the economy.