There has been a spectacular difference in various nations' performance during this crisis. As a Scandinavian I'm a bit skewed in my judgement, but I'm especially in awe at Denmark and Norway's actions, given their lack of recent history with infectious disease:
Quickly discover from external evidence what the new reality is, that it's much worse than anything seen during the lifetimes of current leaders, that it requires extreme measures normally only deployed during times of war, and then use science-based leadership and a broad array of expertise to choose what measures to apply. Then apply them with vigor and competently deal with the fallout.
This is not trivial - crucially, it requires that the central leadership avoids dogmatic and heuristic reasoning adapted to conditions that no longer apply. Because even if you have such top leadership, there will be leaders on the second tier of this hierarchy that are not used to reasoning on a war footing. They will act or give advice that's normally sound, but counterproductive in the new and extreme reality. Top leadership needs to catch onto this fast, and strike down or disregard advice that's not applicable to the crisis at hand.
You can see these phenomena in a plethora of fields. Scientists grasping for N=100,000 double-blind randomized peer-reviewed studies for a novel phenomenon, rather than make the best educated guess from reasoning and available evidence. National leadership trying to solve a health-induced economic crisis by printing money and nothing else. Politicians infighting and posturing by old routine, as if the enemy army isn't already banging down the gates. Reasoning by analogy, let's do the same as we do in a bad flu season. Blame the other party, has always worked before.
Or a subtle insidious variant that's currently responsible for Sweden's problems: let the experts handle it, and dictate public policy without regard for what happens outside of their field of expertise. Turns out an expert in a narrow field with an IQ of 120 and a track record of success is a very dangerous leader. They often aren't aware of their blind spots.