I personally know experts in virology who are not working on a vaccine for this virus.

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.