In 2020, novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV or COVID-19) was rampant around the world, causing the first global pandemic and leading many countries to become victims. However, it is quite surprising that developed and industrialized countries (the so-called Northern countries) which have been identified as enjoying the good public health governance, severely suffered from epidemics—not only the total number of domestic confirmed cases is extremely high, but also the second and third waves of epidemics continue to occur even after the lockdown policies and/or nationwide COVID-19 vaccination campaigns. A number of studies in the field of political science have analyzed this phenomenon, suggesting that: (1) democracy is to some extent inefficient; (2) globalization makes the task of border control more difficult; and (3) people in democracies usually have a strong individualistic orientation and awareness. However, the existing literature rarely focuses on public health per se. To address this problem, we begin by analyzing national healthcare system (NHS), then comparing the differences between advanced industrial countries in Europe, America and East Asia. We find that the more rigorous a system of ‘graded medical treatment’ is in one country, the more severe spread of epidemics could be in that country. On the contrary, some advanced industrial countries in East Asia have not adopted a rigorous system of ‘graded medical treatment’, whereas their governments have implemented a single-payer mechanism by which healthcare is paid for by a single public authority, not a private authority, nor a mix of both. Precisely because of the differences mentioned above, some advanced industrial countries in East Asia show a better performance in epidemic response to COVID-19.