How do you know that? I'd be more willing to bet that Americans have been mostly complacent as they haven't dealt with any meaningful threat since 9/11. Most of them don't prepare like they should anyway, even when Obama told them to do so.
If there's any racism going on, it's with the people who fear Asians because they think they're all contaminated with COVID-19.
> They had 3 months to prepare and, still, they believe that to fight the virus is just enough to wash hands and stay a few feet away from their coworkers, just as with a normal seasonal flu. That's ridiculous.
That's what they've been told to do by government officials and journalists.
Interesting point, but the Spanish-American War was only 20 years before that. Attitudes in the US toward Spain were probably much different then than they are now.
It’s a stupid concern. The reason the government is incompetent is that the government is incompetent. That’s not uniquely American, and there’s no evidence that race has played into any of this. We didn’t exactly change our tune when Italy freaked out. Does that mean we’re racist against Italians?
My read from the US is different. I think over the past 20 years Americans have seen coverage of many scary diseases from afar (SARS, west nile, zika, MERS, ebola). None of these had a large impact on American society. So these experiences have led Americans, not wholly unreasonably, to not pay much attention to a new infectious disease in a faraway place.
I doubt it comes down to thinking America is somehow “better”. If anything, people seem more inclined to envy the coordinated responses of Asian countries, especially South Korea.
