While Trump has certainly mishandled many aspects of this (constant questioning of public health experts, putting economy over health, etc...)
...I think the myth is that the right is the only side "trying to make it political".
Even for the few (rather underwhelming) measures he did take back in late-Jan/early-Feb, the left side of the fence was just as quick to make it political.
Right after his China travel ban, many left-leaning politicians were tripping over each other to downplay the severity, and encourage people to congregate in Asian-owned shopping districts (Nancy got a photo-op by encouraging people to come to China town, and participating in a festival with large groups of people gathered together), and Cuomo and DeBlasio were downplaying it at that point simply to spite Trump...and that's in late Feb...simply so they could chalk his actions up to Xenophobia.
We've seen other things like like "
all public gathering have to be put on hold, but we'll make exceptions for Social Justice protests because they're too important to stop"
...and then things where left-leaning entities want to exempt people of color from mask ordinances, etc...
In all honesty, if Trump came out on Jan 31st and issued the following executive orders
- Ban all travel from other countries for 90 days (with the exception of US citizens returning home)
- Ban all large gatherings including festivals, amusement parks, sporting events, and protests
- Mask ordinance (no exemptions apart from medical exemptions)
Do we really think Democrats would've gone along with it and said "Yeah, that's a good idea"?
Or would it be the more likely:
"Trump is just using this virus as a means to promote Xenophobia and shut down protests for police accountability to pander to the right!, and him trying to make people of color wear masks is just him being reckless by subjecting them to potential additional discrimination!"
While there's no shortage of "worship Trump no matter what" folks on the right, I think people wildly underestimate the size and scope of "find a reason to oppose Trump no matter what" contingent on the left.