Until all labs, equipment and experts are reassigned from whatever they are doing to finding a vaccine or cure, humanity is far from 'maximum response'.
Assuming that world leaders are working in the best interests of their populations, that leads me to believe that whatever these experts and labs are currently studying is considered more important than this. Or to say it another way, world leaders have decided the hundreds of millions of dollars necessary to persuade these experts and labs to switch to studying this virus isn't worth the money. Which means those leaders believe that either the virus won't hit pandemic levels, or if it does, the economic impact will be less than hundreds of millions of dollars.
Surely they are reading all the available literature that has been published, they would be poor experts if they weren’t keeping up with the hottest topic in their field in like forever.
You should get them to come here and do an informational, break down some of the more specialized technical information, about how the virus behaves, attacks, etc. clearing up any confusion the technically minded, lay virologists among us.
As an example, there is currently the worst epidemic of dengue in South America's history right now. (3 million infected and 1500+ deaths in 2019). https://www.bbc.com/mundo/noticias-51496280
From my minor lay person knowledge, every year there’s a decent sized (not in a good way of course) outbreak in Africa, South Asia, and/or more rarely, South America. If not multiple.
Why would you re-assign people working on those or other things that are serious?
I don’t want to put words into your mouth, but personally I know one person who essentially said because the African or South Asian issues are localized. He only cares if it’ll possibly affect him. Again not saying you are saying this.