Keep Calm and Combat Corona Virus

Today's New York Times reports 307 American cases of corona virus and 17 deaths. My New York friends confess to buying N95 masks online.
Here I sit in North Rhine Westphalia, the smallish (by American standards) German state (teeny bit bigger than Maryland) boasting the same number of cases, and I have yet to see one of those masks on the street. A few wear Grey's-Anatomy-style surgical masks, the ones that won't prevent you from catching anything although they might prevent you from passing on what you've caught. If I hear someone cough two rows ahead in the train, I turn my head the other way and maybe pull my coat up around my nose. Rub on a little hand sanitizer and a little 10% urea hand creme.
Yes, toilet paper has a way of disappearing from grocery and drug store shelves--also pasta, flour, and packaged foods. But Amazon delivers toilet paper for reasonable prices, scalpers prices only for hand sanitizer and those Grey's-Anatomy masks.
Although Germany is around three times bigger than New York state,* the whole country fits into the state of Texas, with room to spare. But the folks in NRW are still riding the trams and the regional railroad, and most of us are still going to work and to school. 
The contrast--307 cases as an American national emergency, as opposed to 300 as a cause for measured concern in the much smaller state of a much smaller country, double that in the whole country--strikes me. Germans are practical. Their tendency to plan, to tabulate, to organize everything into the ground, their lack of spontaneity, can be pretty debilitating when they're trying to write essays. But these national traits are great for combating hysteria. Most Germans don't do hysteria. You only sense they're freaked out because they're planning and organizing even more than usual. They'll load up on nonperishable necessities, but they'll forget they're not supposed to offer a handshake, and laugh when you whip out your hand sanitizer. 
Americans see themselves as special. Exceptions to the rule. People who don't lose wars, succumb to diseases, or elect tyrants. When I think of Afghanistan and Vietnam (for starters), AIDS, especially during Ronald Reagan's blighted years in office, a time when that virus could have been controlled and wasn't, and when I think of the not-my-president who is anything but a teddy bear but who now has a bear marketed in his name--I curse American exceptionalism. It might be okay in a context or two--so great at junk food! So great at making money! So great at inventing things! But not: "How could this happen? And to us?" I blame that sentiment for what seems to me an extraordinary level of fear among Americans.







*Thank you, MyLifeElsewhere, for statistics.