It may be new, but lots of people - qualified, talented, educated, smart people - knew that something like it was inevitable and prepared reports and plans for what to do. There were government agencies in place to handle it, until Trump got rid of them. Trump ignored all of the people who knew what was going on, and said it wasn't a big deal, and then turned things over to Mike Pence whose previous experience with disease outbreaks was causing one when he was governor of Indiana.
https://www.indystar.com/story/news/...na/4890988002/
Here's an analogy: suppose you got elected mayor of a town, and the town has a river running through it. The river has never flooded because of the system of dikes and levees in the area. So you decide to cut the budget for maintaining the flood control system, because, hey, the river's never flooded, and then you fire the guy who runs the agency that's in charge of responding to floods, because, hey, the river's never flooded. All the disaster preparedness people tell you that's a bad idea, but you ignore them because they're part of the deep state and you know the river never floods and no one knows more about weather than you do.
Over time, the flood control system deteriorates because there's no funding and no one in charge. Then, later, the weather people tell you that it's going to rain heavily upstream of your town in a few days and the river's going to flood, and you should read the report the last mayor had prepared about what to do if there's a flood. You ignore them, and tell the townspeople that it's only a few drops of rain, nothing to worry about. The rain starts to fall, and the river's rising, and you say to the townspeople, oh, it's risen before, it's going to go down again, there's nothing to worry about, and by the way the stock market is starting to look really good to you. Meanwhile the flood control system is failing because you cut the funding for repairs, and the water's still rising. And all the experts are telling you to evacuate the town, or at least try to repair the flood control system, or put up sandbags on the river, and the weather people are telling you more rain's coming....and you do nothing. Finally the flood happens, and everything's under six feet of water, and lots of people drown, and you say "Gosh, this has never happened before, no one could have known this would happen." You also say "No, I don't take responsibility at all," when someone asks you if you take responsibility for what happened. (That's a direct quote from Trump, by the way).
The proper response of the townspeople should be to kick you out of office and run you out of town on a rail after tarring and feathering you.
Ted