I'm going to be completely fair to Trump for a change: the job of government in a time of pandemic is to understand the level of the threat so they can strike a balance between saving as many lives as possible, while also not going overboard as that would irreparably damage their country's place in the global economy. Nobody wants to be the first to close their borders, until there's no other option. Nobody wants to be the one country who overspent if it turned out not as bad as you thought it'd be. That's what happened to France and a few other countries with Avian Flu a couple years back, where these countries peer-pressured themselves into buying millions of vaccines that ended up not being useful. In the same way, it would be possible to greatly reduce the death toll of the seasonal flu by doing everything we're doing today every year... But nobody wants to be the one country who spends one month a year not having an economy.

A politician's job is to think not just of the next 2 months, but also of the next 5 years. And due to how viruses develop, having a good idea of how things will evolve, and how much of a governmental response is "just enough" is something incredibly difficult. That truly cannot be understated. A lot of world leaders much smarter than Trump have failed at it in the past (see Avian Flu), and a lot of world leaders much smarter than Trump have failed at it this time around (see Macron's quick 180 no scope declaration of war over the weekend).

With that said... Trump was given a lot of opportunities to do better than he has in this instance, and he's failed to take very single one of them. Because sometimes, even when you're being as fair as you can, he still somehow manages to come off as an idiot.