I think an underappreciated part of the pandemic mitigation discourse is non-compliance.
On masks, while public masking rates eventually got relatively high the USC study, this pandemic showed a lot of people were not wearing masks in high risk settings like church services. So the high public rates were misleading to the actual adherence and real risk.
Same issue with isolation. A Minnesota department of health study of this pandemic showed a lot of people were not being honest to contact tracers on their contacts and people were going to the gym knowing they had a recent positive test and were actively infectious. And the UK study the CDC cited for isolation guidance showed 30% of people didn't do the full 10 day isolation.
That's why I think harm reduction mentalities aren't irrelevant this pandemic. The unfortunate truths of the US pandemic are that people weren't very good at following proper mitigation guidance like in some other countries. Some of that was wilful and deliberate malfeasance (probably more so with masking) and some of it was likely do to inability (couldn't take time off from work for too long/no paid sick leave/etc).