Part of the problem is that the media keeps on misleading people about how other countries are doing in order to push the narrative that their country's government is inexplicably failing at dealing with Covid-19. For example, here in the UK (and I think the US is similar), the media and opposition have been pushing the idea that a competent government would be able to set up a working test and trace program to control the virus, like South Korea, and the fact that the UK was forced to resort to closing and restricting pubs and restaurants and limiting social interactions is proof ours is incompetent. The BBC has also been pushing the narrative that there's no evidence those kind of local lockdown measures work. In reality, of course, South Korea has been heavily reliant on precisely those kind of measures - every time they lift them and try to rely on test and trace, masks, and weaker social distancing measures, cases start increasing and they have to reimpose them.

For example, take the South Korea section in this article about how Europe is failing: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-54482905 It starts off by attributing their success to "mass testing and strict contact tracing". In reality, South Korea is testing at about a tenth the rate of a typical European country (10-20 thousand a day), doesn't routinely test people with mild potential symptoms, and has no way of reliably detecting cases that don't have links to ones they know about - which have been appearing in increasingly alarming numbers. Technically, "tests have always been easily available" as the article says, but they successfully discourage most people from getting one by charging for them under most circumstances. They don't even appear to be trying to improve this either; their testing capacity seems to be at the same level it was in like March.

As for the strict contact tracing, this sentence hides a multitude of things: "the majority of people have accepted it and prioritised controlling the pandemic over their own privacy". I'm sure the people who didn't have the entire internet speculating that they were cheating on their partner, and aren't being criminalized for refusing to out themselves as gay to their homophobic employer in a country with no legal protections, and don't oppose the government, have no problem with it. Something tells me that the BBC would be infinitely less willing to put a positive spin on screwing over a minority of people like that in the name of the greater good if the UK or US government did it though.

The article goes on to downplay the other restrictions. "When infections rise, stricter measures are put in place", the BBC says, but makes it sound a limited, mostly brief and long ago thing: "At one point there was a 21:00 curfew on restaurants in the capital, Seoul. But now, social distancing guidelines are back to their lowest level." In reality, they'd literally only just dropped social distancing meaures to that level and allowed bars in Seoul to reopen right before the article was published: https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-health-coronavirus-southko... It's still too early to even see the effect of this on cases. That bar closure was also imposed only two weeks after the previous 9pm curfew and complete ban on indoor dining/drinking in Seoul establishments was lifted. If the UK did this, there'd be endless BBC headlines about U-turns, confusing, seemingly arbitrary measures, and speculation as to whether businesses would survive - not this kind of attempt to minimize the extent of the measures. Especially the part about night clubs reopening; South Korea has tried this at least twice and had to do almost immediate U-turns both times, and there's no reason to expect they can manage it now.

I suspect the BBC would also have plenty to say about (for example) the flu vaccine screw-up if it happened in the UK: http://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20201015001058 They've certainly put enough of a negative spin on the fact that the UK doesn't have enough flu vaccines immediately to deal with unprecidented demand and the implications for the fight against Covid-19, even though there's nothing the government could really do given the lead times. But because it happened in the supposedly more competent success story country, most people will never hear about it and the illusion that our government is just incompetent compared to them will remain unchallenged.