Attempting to put political spins on things really serves no useful purpose. I am of the belief that medical experts also underestimated the virus (including my own pulmonologist, whose opinion I sought back in December) and regardless of what political actions were or were not taken, we would have eventually been in the situation we are now in. Fingerpointing is not helping or improving the current situation. It's now a question of how many people will die and how quickly a vaccine can be developed. Going forward, one of the lessons learned will be to have a stockpile of medical equipment, and perhaps other lessons will be learned. My personal opinion is that the medical community has grown increasingly cocky about its ability to develop effective treatments for everything. Now that attitude has been and will be put to a severe test. The current situation shines a light on the pharmaceutical industry R&D, and now is a chance to put all their profits to work and come up with a winner. We will see what happens.
BTW, the entirety of human history is littered with examples of novel diseases that developed from new strains of bacteria and viruses. Did they think it was never going to happen again or that they would just be able to figure it out when it did? This is part of evolution and has been from the beginning of time, and it will NEVER change in living organisms. It may be a 1 in a 100 year event, but doesn't mean it was not going to happen again. It was always going to happen again.