I think that initially they thought it was spread mainly by surface contact, thus the hand washing mania. It wasn’t until a couple of months in that they knew it was predominantly spread via inhaled droplets.
One of the biggest screwups in this whole screwed up response, that's for sure. The other was the total disaster of testing preparations. The biggest was letting Trump anywhere near a microphone.
The reason I didn't vote for Obama is that I felt like his soaring rhetoric during the campaign never matched his governing, which was far more prosaic. Smart, dignified, capable, transformational - all true, but too often, he didn't aim high enough IMO.