Monolingual English speakers and linguistic distance

In the English-speaking world, you often hear that Americans or British don't speak other languages. This makes senes in a way, because English speakers in non-English speaking countries all speak their country's language. But still I was interested to find out the rate of monolingual English speakers in some countries. I cannot find all data but some interesting findings.

The Unitd States has a very high rate of monolingual English speakers, about 80%.

In the United Kingdom, the rate is a bit lower, 61%. But this figure is highest in Europe as a rate of monolingualists (not limited to English as there are many languages in Europe).

Canada is 56% English monolingual.

In Australia, data says it's a rate of people only using English "at home", which is 76%.

In New Zealand, more than 80% of people speak only English.

These are interesting numbers because the national policies and healthcare access can be impacted by these rates.

Additionally, the linguistic distance is often ignored in policies and healthcare. If a Dutch or German native is lost in a hospital in the UK, probably they can get by, as the Dutch and German languages share the same root as English, the Germanic language. Dutch and German natives have much bigger luck than, say, Japanese natives. The linguistic distance between English and Japanese is great. In many linguistic distance maps, Japaese or similar languages are even not listed there. That just shows how different they are.

Often "non-native speakers" are generalised, but there are big differences, which indicate the differences of cognitive adjustment or struggle to be at a "normal" level in one language context. Awareness of the linguistic distance may be one step forward to de-generalise this group.