I can tell you what I know/believe, but please take it for what it is worth. I am no expert!
I followed the research by Terrence Tumpey at the CDC as he was reconstructing the 1918 "Spanish" flu. What he learned was that he had to get all the non structural proteins there in the right order to have the explosive replication that proved to be so fatal in 1918. Dr. Tumpey says,
“The HA and PB1 virus genes of the 1918 virus are essential for maximum replication and virulence.”
In 2009, please correct me, he was able to get the same virulence in a bird flu, and it became apparent that there was no stopping a 1918 pandemic from happening again. The CDC alerted the president and Obama instructed the government to begin studying pandemic response.
From time to time among other things, they ran war games with politicians and computer models. Nothing the politicians ever did was enough. For example the epidemiologists would advise them to close the roads, but they refused to do so unless there were enough cases. But once there were enough cases then it was too late to stop the spread. They failed every single time, I believe.
The real government's real response to the coronavirus was certainly another iteration of failure.
They didn’t have the same degree of cleanliness in 1918.
And that all sounds like the same old scare hype used to control the weak-minded.