Trump shutting down travel from China was a good move.
But after that, he assumed that was all that was needed and assured Americans the worst was over and everything was under control.
He missed an opportunity to ramp up preparedness and start stocking up on vital medical supplies.
As of now, we need him to show leadership. Start making tough decisions.
Trump has left the hard decisions to local authorities. If you need medical supplies, you are on your own. Let the states fight among themselves for who gets what.
He needs to empower Mike Pence to make decisions on allocation of resources. Force companies to produce needed supplies.
The common understanding at that moment was the spreading of the virus person to person. It was ignored since when the virus has been infecting people. You must understand that you show the symptoms with a certain delay after you got infected.
It is understood that to stop Chinese people coming to the US was late already, but in reality the virus can't be detected unless you use the proper equipment, and not only Chinese people were the affected ones. Italians coming from their country might have brought the disease as well.
Something in what president Trump is right, is that State governments have the responsibility to act in conjunction with the Federal government in this emergency.
State authorities are very autonomous to create their own laws, their own sanctuary cities and more, These State authorities have also the total freedom and responsibility to act against the current disease.
Look at Washington DC, which is looking for becoming a State but until today is letting people to be in great numbers to see the flowers of the cherry trees in downtown, while real established States are prohibiting people in streets and parks and beaches in their cities. Tel me about "leadership".
I disagree with the isolation measure as a solution, but by respect to the authority and the rest of people who think that is the correct answer to the spread of the virus, I avoid going places if it is not necessary, and avoid contact with others.
And I do it against my will but I'm trying to be part of the suggested solution.
Why start pointing fingers on others when no country in the world has make it better?
Of course lots of deaths will be the consequence, this is about a disease with unknown vaccine to stop it or alleviate its spreading.
Making more masks and other supplies is not an act of magic, it is to find current reserves and how much is available, is to plan the distribution, is to reach the prime material to start production, and all of this in a moment when "everybody" wants to have the mask.
When you say "prevention", you must understand that if this is about a car, prevention means to have a cover valve gasket at hand because the car has 120,000 running valves and might start leaking at any moment. It happens that the car only has 60,000 running miles, but very recently has been announced the pcv is faulty in that brand, model and year of the car and one consequence will be a leaking valve cover gasket.
You will order the gasket to have it at hand, but you still don't see why you must hurry. And funny, you still will run your car without gasket replacement even when you noticed the first leaks.
Prevention is in many cases not a good idea.
I was working for a government agency for years. Sometimes a supply was ordered like to be in storage to last its demand for the next 20 years. It happens that after three years the supply became obsolete because a better model with better qualities came to the market. There you have a preventive measure that didn't work very well, the waste of such amount of supplies good for decades but changed every certain amount of years anyway.
Look at the case of the "masks", according to what the administration suggest, the ones needed are not the common dust masks but special ones for doctors and nurses. The ones in stock in hospitals might not be good to prevent the contagious of this virus.
In reality, everybody is "learning" more about this disease each day, so we must do our part the best we can., That's all.