Any responsible president (Democrat or Republican) after getting the January info would have banned incoming flights from Europe and Asia almost immediately. U.S. citizens returning from abroad could have been quarantined in boats. Two years earlier Trump had disbanded the task force and playbook that been developed by previous administrations to deal with pandemics.
Japan is a large country, although not as big as we are. They've had 8359 deaths with roughly 1/3 of our population. So 8359 x 3 = 25,000 total deaths. We are richer and have more resources and yet we have 525,000 deaths.