Honestly, the US hasn't experienced a national crisis in so long that nobody knows how to react.

The fact the federal government is twiddling its thumbs encourages people who aren't immediately hurting to believe it's not serious. https://twitter.com/Floodwaters12/status/1246126429152083969

Some people react like it's a hurricane because that's something they understand; hence the stockpiling of food, water, toilet paper, etc. But fires and hurricanes are still localized phenomena. They happen "over there, to those people" as far as most Americans are concerned.

We've been programmed by Hollywood and previous, localized disasters to expect soldiers in the streets and lockdowns / curfews / martial law, etc. during an "actual" crisis. So if you're not in New York City or somewhere else heavily impacted by COVID-19, life seems normal.

It's not, obviously. But Americans have no experience with a pandemic, and the lack of response from federal, and in many cases, state and local authorities, compounds the impression it's no big deal. It's happening over there, to those people. Which is what Republicans want.

Republicans want people to believe this is a blue state problem. They want people to continue being good little consumers for business and the markets' sake. They don't want people to wake up or panic because then they'll blame Trump and their Republican state governments.

That this allows COVID-19 to spread freely, endangering everyone, is beside the point because as long as bodies aren't piling up in the streets and the chaos is confined to your local ER, out of sight, out of mind, they can maintain the charade. But it will catch up eventually.

Besides, you can't have 10 million unemployed, 5 mile long lines for food banks, and family members dying alone in overwhelmed hospitals for very long before something snaps in the American psyche. Even MAGA voters will start to resent being treated like Puerto Rico after Maria.