This is one of the dumber attacks on Trump. He said that he didn't want to incite panic. He still declared an emergency and enacted travel bans.
Those early reports were also wrong that it was significantly deadlier than the flu.
It is significantly deadlier than the flu. Not on a per case basis, but based on it's ease of transmission. Even with unprecedented efforts to reduce it's spread, there have been an extremely large number of cases which, despite it's low mortality rate, has seen more deaths than any flu season in the last 20 years at least.
Regardless of what your opinion is on COVID-19, Trump was told it was deadlier than the flu and then based on this information, proceeded to lie about it. Many of his lies are quite public and some of them hilariously juvenile. Remember when he said it wasn't a pandemic and then said he knew it was all along? I 'member. Heap it on the pile of other lies. Our Prime Minister managed to not incite panic and didn't have to resort to lies to do so. It's about as feeble an excuse as I can imagine and a great example of the kind of post-hoc rationalization Trump often partakes in to justify his behaviour rather than say... acting responsibly.