I think the problem is twofold. 1) Our brains are bad at acting on information that contradicts our gut feelings, which are usually based on things we perceive

I think the problem is twofold. 1) Our brains are bad at acting on information that contradicts our gut feelings, which are usually based on things we perceive directly. If we don't see direct evidence of a threat, we might take some minimal steps to avoid it, but it's hard to fully commit for intellectual reasons alone. 2) We've adapted to a low signal/noise ratio. Everything is always a near-cataclysmic threat: tech companies, Trump, the Clintons, Sanders, immigrants, global warming, vaccines, carbs, terrorists, and so on. They're all going to kill us or ruin our lives! We could probably mobilize and act on one or two of them, if we could all agree, but all of them? Some of them contradictory? We just pick a handful that resonate, and ignore the rest. And that mostly works, because the threats have few visible short-term effects. A pandemic is just another one of these filtered threats, right up until the exponential growth shoves it in our faces -- at which point it's too late.