I would say it is a failure of communication, or coordination. There were plenty of observers recognizing the threat by the new year, but not enough to crystall

I would say it is a failure of communication, or coordination. There were plenty of observers recognizing the threat by the new year, but not enough to crystallize into a shared awareness and coherent re-prioritization of resources. In light of that, I think it is misguided to trash-talk any attempts at communication and outreach by people tasked to protect the public and who lacked the power to actually commit the nation to drastic course changes. As a layperson in academia, I certainly recognized the potential threat just from the news trickling out of China in late 2019. Meanwhile, I had colleagues who went ahead with business travel to Italy towards the end of February! There is mind-boggling inertia in the capacity for the public at large to internalize disruptive facts and ideas, and this inertia connects back through the body politic into representative leadership, who can be pinned down like Gulliver even if they are aware that action is required. A relative of mine works in security and risk mitigation for a large school district in CA. They were being briefed on the COVID-19 risk by their federal contacts in late January. They were scrambling to revise and organize appropriate disaster plans. Even with that, they struggled to steer the whole ship around to school closures in mid-March. Now, imagine that every large organization had to do similarly in the same timeframe, drawing mostly on extant resources. They could not all hire new staff, bring in specialists, or procure large supplies that were not already part of their general war-chest for unknown emergencies.