It took a very long time to get started. Check the history using the news headlines as your timeline. The Federal government rejected non-US tests/guidelines,

It took a very long time to get started. Check the history using the news headlines as your timeline. The Federal government rejected non-US tests/guidelines, while the CDC worked on a test. The test didn't work. The U.S. State of Washington had a solution, but the Federal government rejected it. Meanwhile some countries were conducting tests like crazy and were able to do some initial containment. In The U.S. we continued to go to the beach (Trump country), we went to farmer's markets (DNC country), and neither U.S. political culture made any effort to involve the authority figures to force citizens to stay apart. Because Freedom. Nice job, U.S. I write this holed up in the U.S. city with the most infections and deaths at the moment.