It wasn't missed, it was ignored. We used to have Pandemic Response Team. Their job was to monitor Pandemics and develop plans to protect the US from them. The team sent Trump a report in 2016 between the election and before he took office advising him of their work and to warn of what they considered an impending Pandemic in the near future.
In 2018 they sent another report to Trump with more details and advising the administration to begin stockpiling equipment and make plans to defend against a Pandemic. Trump decided the team was an Obama Deep State team trying to make the Trump administration look bad. He fired everyone working on the team and closed the office instead of acting on their recommendation.
Trump was advised again in 2019 by other intelligence agencies of an impending Pandemic. Everyone in the world knew by December of last year that this was coming. Yet it is 3 1/2 months later before the USA even begins to gather the protective gear and testing equipment.
If testing had been available 2 months ago we could have identified who had CV19 and who did not. Catching it early would have allowed us to quarantine only those with CV19 and allow everyone else to continue with a normal life. As it is now we can only test a tiny fraction of people and then only those showing symptoms. As a result we now have to assume everyone has it .
We are testing a lot of people now, but the number of tests per capita is among the lowest in the world. In South Korea and Germany they started testing everyone as soon as this started and those countries have not had nearly the problems we have had. By the time this is over we will be hit the hardest and suffer the most economically. Due to poor leadership at the top.
