100% cultural difference are at play. Almost all of the asian countries have a strong sense of doing things for communal reasons over self issues. This is sort of against the freedom model of western liberal ideals. Most of the actions recommended for minimizing transmission have and continue to be standard behaviors people collectively adhere to in those countries.
At least in the US, the fact that both sides have extreme political views on a myriad of things, Covid has ended up becoming an issues vs people stopping and saying ok, how do we meet in the middle, treat each other as humans, and positively convince people to work for the better good. Yelling at someone and calling them a myriad of names because they don't want a mask, isn't going to win them over. Ironically it's the same root problem we have in politics. Both sides also have to accept that they don't have the answer, they have an answer with the truth lying somewhere in the middle.
These days though, i'm losing faith in the ability of people to be calm and collective in discourse. I guarantee just the discussions here will be downvoted when the opinions don't match 100%.
That's the real problem we're going to have to solve.
The extreme views you mention are partly due to the difference in philosophical development. Eastern philosophies tend to believe the truth lies between opposing views. In western philosophies, it is generally believed that one side is right and one side is wrong. We even see this in the adversarial basis of our judicial system (a fair fight between two parties will produce the truth). Our primary and voting system is partly to blame here. Extreme candidates in primaries get more support because their voters are more driven. Since primaries take place at different times, the first states might have 6 candidates and the last states to vote might have only one or two.
I think your last two paragraphs allude to a belief I have - democracy is only as "good" (rational, reasonable, logical, etc) as the citizens are. I wish schools taught philosophy of argument classes (logic).
At least in the US, the fact that both sides have extreme political views on a myriad of things, Covid has ended up becoming an issues vs people stopping and saying ok, how do we meet in the middle, treat each other as humans, and positively convince people to work for the better good. Yelling at someone and calling them a myriad of names because they don't want a mask, isn't going to win them over. Ironically it's the same root problem we have in politics. Both sides also have to accept that they don't have the answer, they have an answer with the truth lying somewhere in the middle.
These days though, i'm losing faith in the ability of people to be calm and collective in discourse. I guarantee just the discussions here will be downvoted when the opinions don't match 100%.
That's the real problem we're going to have to solve.