We have no talent for systems. Our poor response to the pandemic emerges from this. We're repelled by order, processes, planning, the straightness of a straight line. We're addicted to informality.
We have handled Covid the way we drive
My latest: https://bit.ly/32RawAk 

We're good at maintaining social norms but in everything else our instinct is to wing it. In this way there is something very ancient about us. Ideally, all this should not surprise us, but the one dignity we offer ourselves is the right to be surprised by our country.

I think we escaped the full curse of the central planning era because we were lousy at the planning part.