Coronavirus is spreading rapidly in the US. American culture might make it uniquely vulnerable 

This article discusses the US specifically but I think there's a similar problem, at least to some extent, in the UK and Australia too.

All three countries were slow to respond and initially downplayed the virus (Trump is still doing so). All three seem to have a sense of Anglo-exceptionalism that made us relatively unwilling to follow expert advice until it got bad. Unsurprisingly, all three are common sources of climate change scepticism too. We all too often refuse to accept that just plodding on won't make everything alright, and instead fall into a "she'll be right" approach and bury our heads in the sand. I think we tend to think that really bad stuff only happens to other countries. Contrast this to Koreans, with most of them having been through at least one of deep poverty, colonialism, civil war, dictatorship, nuclear threat, plus things like MERS, SARs, etc - they know very well that bad shit happens and that they need to face it. They responded effectively from the very start.

After being the dominant powers for so long, it seems that us Anglophone countries assume we cnan ride things out and come out on top. It's a kind of 'muscle memory' that breed over-confidence.

Unfortunately the US has a double whammy of having an even more individualist / anti-collectivism culture than the other two. And the triple whammy of having the most incompetent leader of all of us, who up til a few days ago was saying he "wanted to see packed churches for Easter in a few weeks". It's good to see our countries finally starting to kick our arses into gear and hope it can continue that way.