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Abstract The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID‐19) pandemic has taken a massive toll on human life worldwide. The case of the United States—the world's largest economy—is particularly noteworthy, since the country suffered a disproportionately larger number of deaths than all other countries during the first year of the pandemic. A careful analysis may shed new light on the multifaceted processes contributing to this failure and help us prepare ourselves not to repeat the same mistakes in the future. Cultural psychology offers unique insights by highlighting mutually reinforcing interactions across collective, cultural, and psychological factors. Here, we review extant evidence and argue that various factors at these disparate levels converged to foster an independent mode of action, which, in turn, undermined effective coping with the infectious disease. The lack of effective political leadership exacerbated the resulting dire state of the country. Drawing on this analysis, we discuss several policy recommendations at collective, cultural, and psychological levels.