The US always lags on a major crisis and then surges over time. It happens in every instance. It's because of the scale and nature of Federal -> State -> Local

The US always lags on a major crisis and then surges over time. It happens in every instance. It's because of the scale and nature of Federal -> State -> Local as a system, mixed with human rights and democracy (no authoritarian switch to throw, so to speak). The US has to put a lot of things in motion to mobilize at all levels and it's extraordinarily expensive, so you don't want to do it unless you must. As recently as mid January the WHO was still repeating Chinese propaganda about the virus not being transmitted from person to person (China had known at that point for at least 30-45 days that that was a lie, they were trying to keep the world from isolating them and hammering their economy, hoping they could stop it quickly). Trump's delays cost the US three to four weeks of additional prep time. From the first week of February (closer to when the US should have began to prepare nationally), versus the end of Feb / first week of March. It was also entirely unclear how infectious it was and what the mortality rate was likely to be, until well into February.