First of all, information is changing constantly with this virus. Professionals, experts, hell even the surgeon general has changed positions on the virus and what it will look moving forward. Numbers are changing constantly. A SHIT TON of people are following stay at home orders, which helped immensely. Governments have to assume people will not follow stay at home orders, so the initial numbers are going to be higher than normal. You can look at NY and see how quickly it spread and this is very possible in each city in North America if we aren't careful. On a side note, I know a lot of people that use this as an excuse to play the virus down, but really we don't want to find out how bad it will be if we let our guards down now.
Secondly, Trump... this is a goldmine for him. He's obviously taking and going to take credit for anything positive that comes out of this. He's going to say he warned us from the beginning, even though he was denying how serious it was and that it would be "over by easter"... you know, like a miracle jesus will just wipe it away at easter time because you prayed for it. Fuck that nonsense. He's trash, we know it... a lot more could have been done earlier and what's happening in NY didn't need to happen if they started preparing back in January.
Problem? Presidents during a crisis are popular by default. Election year too... and the clincher? His running mate is an elderly man with obvious signs of dementia. Well done DNC, you fucked yourselves again. Americans aren't going to feel good about electing a guy that probably can't tie his own shoelaces or form complete sentences. All Trump has to do now is repeat what his medical experts are saying, then when this is all over, or when the virus starts disappearing he has to take credit for it, saying how he did xyz for 300 million people and if it weren't for him we would have all died months ago.
Thus, the problem with America (and Canada to an extent) lies here... you pick one person at the top and it's a glorified popularity contest. Whoever has the most money and big time donors behind them and can get the most airtime will magically be the "right person" for the job. Stupid ass system. Need to have multiple people with equal power in charge of different branches of government and we need to stop looking up to the top one person for answers. This won't ever happen though... the problem with the constitution is that it doesn't allow the country to pivot when everything around it changes. You can't have a better government because government won't let that happen.