It's not as though Australia, New Zealand, Italy etc didn't have all you mentioned.
I think the key differentiator is we value individualism a lot and the arguments driving the lack of a tight lock down were about civil liberties not group good. Nothing wrong with that, just that we will suffer longer than other countries who did the tight lock down.
Originally Posted by
JNelson113
However, when you have a significant population of individuals who don't have jobs or livelihoods and massive business failures because of these restrictions, you start getting long term group pain very quickly.