As someone who lived in Italy and now lives in the US, this was driving me absolutely crazy. They have a great health care system, and are a transparent democracy. When things started to happen rapidly there, it was very, very clear that the same situation would play out in the US, and yet there were still a lot of "just a flu" people.
When it was still restricted to China, I was able to reassure myself into complacency with memories of the original SARS. China contained that, so maybe they will contain this one, too?
As soon as it hit Italy hard, that story didn't work anymore, and it was clear it was only a matter of time before it spread everywhere.
They were one of the first countries to ban travel from China.
What you call "political correctness" was just an anti-racism message.
Italy certainly had some things go wrong in some areas, but they were also unlucky in some ways, being the first country to get hit hard.
As far as the US goes it was pretty clear that the administration didn't want to deal with this at all at home. So they were constantly behind the curve and did things only when basically forced.