Actual virus outbreaks are incompatible with this mindset. The markets vastly underestimated the impact it would have. People can exercise their liberty and individualism and right to an opinion to go off and unknowingly infect other people. A week ago I stated I was concerned over the virus and that I was taking shelter to a coworker and got back "there's no need to panic, the media makes it out to be worse than it is" and "this is no worse than the flu." By now there isn't a soul that's not working from home, including them.
It's like speed limits only being imposed on residential neighborhoods after someone's kid gets run over and killed. For these kinds of things some people will only learn when it's too late to take action and the consequences become apparent. They would have to learn to switch off their optimism when it's appropriate next time, if there's a next time.
Or maybe they won't learn, and the actions of a majority we don't control will have irreversible consequences for us as a species. In that case I can't see how it wouldn't be fated. It's a matter of getting everyone on Earth who is well-meaning or not to cooperate in just the right manner when some of them simply won't. Antibiotic resistance is a thing because we trust the general public to take them properly, and they don't.
When the next outbreak is even more deadly or contagious, who knows what will become of us.
It's not simply a case of not understanding exponential growth, Americans actively do not want to understand what's happening. I was in a meeting yesterday and someone, with no hint of reservation, said they felt very optimistic about the business in the next quarter.
This bizarre denial means that things will inevitably get much worse in the US then they will in Italy (and we don't have the political will to solve this like China has even in the most extreme cases).