The upshot is the US has a culture that relatively speaking is not interested in restrictions and glorifies in rebelling against “the man.” You see it throughout the culture. The tolerance that other countries have for fairly draconian measures to control COVID just doesn’t exist to a large extent.
I don’t think this is true. You wouldn’t have laws if it was. When I have visited, I have been surprised at how prescriptive life is there. I think you do have draconian measures, but that they are different types of draconian measures to the ones we are happy with here.
Having lived for extended periods in both the U.S. and Australia, I think both societies (to generalise) are prescriptive but in different ways.
Here in my state in Australia it's accepted that if you drive 7km/h over etc speed limit and get caught you are subject to a $190 speeding fine. 11km/h a limit goes up to $390. Compare Germany where the equivalent fines are about 20-30 Euro.
Strangely, it's also accepted that if you fail to give way and hit someone's car, you are only issued the same "failure to give way" fine of $390 and you don't get any extra panelty for hitting someone's car. If you're poor and can't pay for insurance you get off free because we have very high judgment/sheriff enforcement costs. Even in cases where people KILL people through negligent driving, as long as there's no alcohol, speeding or intoxication at stake, there's no jail sentence.
In the U.S., speeding is enforced much less harshly - in fact some states still happily allow radar jammers - but if you get in an accident and cause injury or death, the judicial punishment/fine is much greater.
In other words, I've found that Australia punishes 'intention' fairly harshly, but it punishes 'outcomes' very gently if the intention wasn't there. It's a society that favours people without the cognitive resources to appreciate the risks they're taking. America is a society that doesn't care so much about intentions but harshly punishes outcomes.
You could say either, or both, are prescriptive approaches.
I also feel Americans work much harder than Australians, mainly because jobs there are so much more precarious. A mistake at work can lead to firing. Downside is more stress. Upside is more productivity and much, much, much, higher salaries for first-rate professionals. Here in Australia the spread of wages is much more even and productivity spread is more even too. I used to manage a lady who'd spend 2-3 hours a day checking in on her home business from work. She did it in the open. She guessed, correctly, that with Australia's worker protections plus the severance pay she'd built up from 10+ years in the job that it was much more expensive for me to counsel/fire her than it was to just accept a 1/3 reduction in productivity.
Each person's individual liberty can come at the expense of someone else's preferences. The mix of liberty and preference shifts between countries. America is at one end of the spectrum. Australia is somewhere between the middle and the other end. It's interesting to see how that has informed the covid response. In the states, no one wanted to sacrifice more than anyone else. Here in Australia, the majority was forced into sacrificing in order to protect the minority. That's something that would never happen in the States.
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