I'm loathe to defend the current US president, but almost no Western country took this seriously until the last possible minute. There is clearly a deeper ideological issue infecting the entire West.
It's absolutely true that most western countries underestimated this. East-Asian countries were better prepared and more willing to take drastic action to do what's necessary. Western countries assumed that, like SARS, Asia would solve this. Turns out it's way more contagious than SARS.
Still, once the seriousness became clear, most countries did take action. Trump continued to deny and spread misinformation, even to this day.
