Well, for one thing, experts being aware of something doesn't translate into politicians and the public being willing to do something about it. Hell, in the US we're several months into the pandemic with over a million dead and a significant chunk of the population still refuses to take the trivial step of wearing masks in public.
However, there absolutely was preparation. Sorry, my knowledge is mostly US centric, but over here, our president and administration from 2009 through 2016 created a pandemic task force that responded swiftly to assist with potential outbreaks throughout the world. In 2014 our then president said in a speech:
“There may and likely will come a time in which we have both an airborne disease that is deadly. And in order for us to deal with that effectively, we have to put in place an infrastructure—not just here at home, but globally—that allows us to see it quickly, isolate it quickly, respond to it quickly, so that if and when a new strain of flu like the Spanish flu crops up five years from now or a decade from now, we’ve made the investment and we’re further along to be able to catch it.”
That administration prepared a variety of training and preparing material for the incoming administration in 2016 including a training scenario that looks almost exactly like the current outbreak. Which the current administration utterly ignored.
However, several countries WERE well prepared for the outbreak. With fast responses and listening to medical and scientific advice, they minimized cases and deaths. Here's a nice readable article discussing some of them:
https://time.com/5851633/best-global-responses-covid-19/