Sadly, I think a lot of the reason for this is that a lot of people, in much of the English-speaking world, haven't heard of a successful government program in

Sadly, I think a lot of the reason for this is that a lot of people, in much of the English-speaking world, haven't heard of a successful government program in their lifetimes. Much of this is media bias (Murdoch-style media will only report on sensationalist failures) but the past decades of withering of state capacity and the growth of elite self-dealing means that successful government interventions are increasingly rare. The idea that government can actually help people seems to be a dead letter in the United States (less so in other English-speaking countries) and this is killing people now we are faced with a pandemic that can only be mitigated through collective (governmental) action.