Why has most countries' government response to the virus been slow?

The government's response to the SARS-CoV-2 virus in most western countries (US and Europe) has been slow, and more strict measures have not been taken until the confirmed case count is on the thousands, where it's too late for those measures to be effective. Is that due to ignorance/incompetence of politicians or there could be some malice behind it? By that I mean, could it be that they didn't do much at the beginning to let it spread just enough so that the virus spread at large on the population, and given elderly people is more vulnerable to death by the virus they could potentially save on a lot of pensions and health care (in EU many countries have free public health care)? See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nSXIetP5iak