I blame Donald Trump.
If the Republicans had chosen a normal Republican in 2016 - like say Ted Cruz - he would have been smart enough to see what to do when he was told about the approaching pandemic. He would have told people he was in charge and reaped all the credit for showing leadership during a major international crisis.
Trump couldn’t see that. He initially downplayed the pandemic because prefers to ignore problems. Then he kept downplaying it because he didn’t want to admit his initial response had been wrong. Then when the problem became too big to downplay, he tried to put the blame on other people. His followers just went in whatever direction he told them to go.