Yes, clearly what we need to deal with a crisis is a little personal responsibility, not a government that even pretends to be effective at addressing it.
If you compare it to a country like Italy that oddly enough seems to be getting praised for it's handling of the pandemic, what more should the US have done? Especially considering how much more lethal it is in Italy and just how crazily fast it spread there. Still, as a non american, it seems to me like everyone talks about how incompetent the US is when they are doing the same or better than their peers?
This has to do with who is currently POTUS. The media in this country are far left leaning, to the point that most at the national level panicked when he was elected. If a person's only source of information is the big 3 or 4 outlets, they will never hear anything positive about the current administration.
The idea that people "just" hate him is a pernicious excuse for avoiding discussion of those specific criticisms.
The US had a whole month to get prepared for this, and instead did pretty much nothing, and even refused to import test kits and prepare itself for large-scale testing the way SK did.
The US has absolutely been incompetent, and while it hasn't been the only incompetent country (Spain is probably another one), it's easily the most visible because of its size and economic power and status as a superpower.
Especially since comments and news about this seem to always highlight how bad the US is dealing with this and how efficient and proactive the EU is when facts prove the opposite? There is a lot of things the rest of the world can blame the US gov for, but this?
* Getting testing kits distributed earlier.
* Not downplaying the severity and contagiousness of the virus.
* Not presenting the virus as a Democratic hoax.
* Putting industry experts in charge of the response rather than politicians.
* Having a fully staffed CDC.
There have been multiple statements by the administration to correct or rectify earlier statements by the same administration. The response has been confusing, contradictory, and in its partisan nature (see bullet point 3 and 4), untrustworthy.
Would it have been wise to test people that travelled there? What if Italy was doing just fine but Sweden had an unknown huge infection number? Would checking every single traveller make sense then, because it could've been anywhere? And from the point when it was already inside the US and highly contagious, does Trumps incompetence really matter?
I mean we are at that point where it's definitely not stoppable. if the situation worsens in terms of mortality and infection numbers become unmanageable then yeah I think that would be something else. But right now the US is actually doing better than the average