COVID-19 isn't that drastically different from SARS, MERS, etc. The main difference is transmissibility of asymptomatic carriers that allowed it to leave Asia undetected. So while the rest of these viruses had been handled in a mature and efficient fashion by the countries affected the very idea of a modern viral pandemic was new to the Western world and it showed, boy did it show.
Instead of just focussing on the issue at hand it was immediately the "Chinese virus" and the American political machine was in full swing to capitalise on the situation. Most of the Western world followed suit with political lines being drawn around responses (or lack there of) and assignment of "blame". In the UK and USA this resulted in probably hundreds of thousands of needless deaths off the back of delayed and then ham-fisted action by Boris Johnson and Donald Trump's administrations.
Meanwhile in Asia it remained apolitical for the most part (I say most part because aspects of pandemic control did become quite political of late). I was in Thailand for the entire duration of the pandemic and despite having access to less resources, late access to the vaccine and being one of the first nations to be exposed outside of China Thailand actually performed very well. Lots of insinuations were made this was due to climate and other factors, anything that shifted the blame away from politicisation of the pandemic as the root cause of performance differences. However as time has wore on and countries with more facts based approaches have continued to out-perform it's obvious - politics is the only real difference among the developed nations, hell it's so strong that it overcomes better access to vaccines and higher ICU bed/capita which should both dominate.