But not nearly to the degree as my old job pre-pandemic that was roughly 3 days a week all in the office and 2 days a week whatever you wanted.

Most devs, myself definitely included, don't wanna sit there with another one while they work on a single problem. We both have our own respective tickets to worry about, who's got time to split entirely dedicating to 1 ticket that isn't yours?

Instead if we hit a major roadblock we'll shoot out a message like "hey dude got a minute?" And hop on a huddle on slack, but I definitely wouldn't call that pair programming the way it's usually implied

Pair debugging does exist but only when stuff goes wrong. This is the vain hope that perhaps two people can make up one competent person when the shit has hit the fan.