The virus started in Wuhan, China. We should never forget that. I do not like to blame but I find it strange that some folks are trying to shift the blame to Trump. We know who Trump is and also what the CCP is. Enough said.
Tropical, I know where you are coming from because you have told us a bit about your personal history. For sure you have pretty good reason to despise communist governments!!!!! Living in Houston as I do, one of the few good things that came out of the Vietnam war was the immigrants who moved here from Vietnam and made this city a lot better place to live.
One big fact is that we live in the US. Chinese scientists proved that this was a novel virus and published it on January 7 and epidemiologists around the world saw it at once and knew immediately that this was a virus never before seen in humans which means none of us have any acquired immunity. And we have seen before what novel coronaviruses can do.
At once a response should have been set up. If this had happened in, say, 2014, the response
would have been immediate, and it would have ensured testing and protective gear were ramped up, and a bunch of other stuff that would take too much time to go into. They had contingency plans.
None of this happened in 2019-2020 because (a) the ability to respond was no longer in place and (b) the people making the decisions were convinced that by simply proclaiming that they had it under control it would actually BE under control. Why? Because Donald Trump commanded it, and his minions listened and obeyed. Why were the response teams dismantled earlier? Because it was something that the Obama administration had put in place, partly as a result of planning by DHS. In the minds of the Trump people that was sufficient reason to kill it.
Even now, Trump could make it easier to deal with equipment shortages of all sorts by using an existing law, which allows companies to start making things and getting a special deal for doing it. Which if I was president I would have done a long time ago because THIS IS A WAR, and when Japan bombs Pearl Harbor you don't quibble too much about the deals you make with Ford or GM to make parts for tanks and ships. Even now, Trump is ignoring the advice of scientists and listening to his idiot son-in-law, who is one of his chief advisors. He is not to blame for SARS-CoV-2 jumping into humans, but he is to blame for what the US has NOT been doing as soon as it became clear that this was a problem. He is to blame for lying about this on a pretty much daily basis.
Of course, it's not just Trump. There are other people who will have blood on their hands, like the governors of Florida and especially Mississippi, and people on Fox News like Sean Hannity who continue to spread misinformation -- and they know it is misinformation, and people like Mitch McConnell and Richard Burr and Kelly Loefler, Louie Gohmert and bunch of other people I could name.
This was always going to be bad, but it didn't need to be this bad.
Edit added. He finally invoked the Defense Production Act to have GM make ventilators, today. He could have done this 9 days ago.
Another edit. "We have only 15 cases of Covid-19. We will reach zero in a couple of days" - Donald Trump
Another edit. That is just for ventilators and it is just one company. Nothing yet from the government to enhance production of masks and other protective equipment.