I think the issue is a better understanding of freedom, not the virus. My current thinking is that a lot of patriots have a much better understanding of freedom than almost all politicians, including Trump.
If Trump is issuing stay-at-home guidelines that don’t have any force of law behind it, that is fine.
The major failing of the feds so far has been the CDC and FDA completely botching the creation of a COVID-19 test. They went wrong on speed, on quality and on banning anyone else from trying to make a test for weeks. Those departments are under Trump’s purview, so he does share some of the responsibility for that failure.