the question is asking what's something that americans/europeans do that makes no sense to you. the fact that i can't get a big pack of ibuprofen like i can in the US doens't make sense to me

There's multiple reasons:

• Medicine goes bad after some time, and most people don't store it properly. This can lead to less or more effective doses than expected, which is obviously really bad.

• Ibuprofen is pretty bad for you if you take it with any kind of regularity.

• It's way easier to fuck yourself up permanently with larger doses. We know that e.g. having a gun around increases the likelihood of successful suicide dramatically. Having a large amount of pills lying around is similarly dangerous, especially considering how bad even proper usage would be.

But is anything stopping you from getting multiple smaller packs?

it wasn't COVID, this was before COVID

As I said, I'd need to see some kind of source.