The original plan was to spread it out over time so hospitals would not get overrun. That morphed somehow into preventing it, which is not possible.
The US has done reportedly more tests per capita than just about anybody, and still it's not enough. The northeast still has the most overall deaths per capita followed by LA.
I have some criticism of how the US handled this early on, but that same criticism applies as well to places like Italy, France, Spain, the UK etc.