My dad could still be alive, but he's not

>i don't understand why the common narrative that i was told, that we were all told growing up, is that one should wait for an ambulance

My wife had a seizure a few years ago, and the first response team clocked in under 5 minutes (close to 3 by my count but I wasnt paying a lot of attention). Then 2 more ambulances arrived <5 more minutes. There was straight up an emergency services gathering at my front door.

The emergency response team is an SUV rather than a full ambulance, with 2 trained paramedics and as much kit as they can fit in. They are faster, because they don't do patient transport, and can arrive ahead of patient transport vehicles. See issues with "ramping" and so forth.

Anyway, this is really an issue of local government policy. Just vote/spay/neuter/tar/feather your politicians.

What country was this?

Australia.

In this post alone there's at least one other comment from someone very familiar with Melbourne's emergency response system deriding its shortcomings. I think it's clear there's always gonna be a ton of variation

It's not so much about the amount of variation in experiences - it's more that even 1 bad experience reflects harshly on the entire system.