A reasonable prediction when Covid hit was that the US was totally fucked, and not just because Trump was president and because Mitch ran the Senate (though largely those reasons). The combination of unwillingness of the government to fire the money cannon at people and the difficulty of doing so, given various broken bits of our bureaucracy, did not provide many reasons for optimism!
CARES was much better than one would have expected, especially the expanded UI, and ARP is *a lot* better than one would expect.
Enought to prevent the Fury Road era of America for a time, at least.