Oh dear... now I am conflicted.... do I agree with D'Snowth? Maybe partially.
Truth is, Trump's initial public response was to down play the situation. I get that. Maybe he did not want to create panic. However, what he is saying now, with having packed churches on Easter Sunday, is irresponsible. Then again, this is coming from someone in NY where everything is on lockdown and cases in NY alone account for half of all cases in the entire US. Maybe we need to look at imposing interstate travel restrictions and allow states that are far less effected to continue on.
As for the hoax comment... he was kind of right... he did not call the virus a hoax, he called the media panic a hoax when we had no real issues and then said the best way to protect us was to secure the boarders... which also is not wrong. The reason we are in this situation is because of globalism. If we didn't have so much inter-country travel and if our industry was domestically based we would be doing just fine now.
BUT... regardless of who was in charge this still would have happened. The difference is what our response would have been. What I do not understand is why he has no enacted the Defense Production Act to force the production of domestic medical supplies to stop price gauging and increase the supply to meet the demand. He claims it would be akin to communism, but it isn't. The businesses are still privately owned and get paid, they just have to produce what the government wants for a limited time. It's like giving all the companies a government contract.