If you're wondering if there's anything the Trump administration has done RIGHT...

You can stop wondering.

Several months before the coronavirus pandemic began, the Trump administration eliminated a key American public health position in Beijing intended to help detect disease outbreaks in China, Reuters has learned.

The American disease expert, a medical epidemiologist embedded in China’s disease control agency, left her post in July, according to four sources with knowledge of the issue.

  Reuters

Well that won't stifle the Chinese claim that the US introduced the virus to China via US military in Wuhan for the Military World Games in October last year.  Pulled out the epidemiologist in July, and smuggled in the virus in October to bring China to its knees and win Trump's trade war.  You know.....it sounds believable.

The first cases of the new coronavirus may have emerged as early as November, and as cases exploded, the Trump administration in February chastised China for censoring information about the outbreak and keeping U.S. experts from entering the country to help.

[...]

[Bao-Ping Zhu, a Chinese American who served in that role and] other sources said the American expert, Dr. Linda Quick, was a trainer of Chinese field epidemiologists who were deployed to the epicenter of outbreaks to help track, investigate and contain diseases. As an American CDC employee, they said, Quick was in an ideal position to be the eyes and ears on the ground for the United States and other countries on the coronavirus outbreak, and might have alerted them to the growing threat weeks earlier.

No other foreign disease experts were embedded to lead the program after Quick left in July.

[...]

Quick left amid a bitter U.S. trade dispute with China when she learned her federally funded post, officially known as resident adviser to the U.S. Field Epidemiology Training Program in China, would be discontinued as of September, the sources said. The U.S. CDC said it first learned of a “cluster of 27 cases of pneumonia” of unexplained origin in Wuhan, China, on Dec. 31.

[...]

The epidemic has overwhelmed healthcare systems some countries, including Italy, and threatens to do so in the United States and elsewhere.

[...]

In a statement to Reuters, the U.S. CDC said the elimination of the adviser position did not hinder Washington’s ability to get information and “had absolutely nothing to do with CDC not learning of cases in China earlier.”

Say what you want.

“In the end, based on circumstances in China, it probably wouldn’t have had made a big difference,” Scott McNabb, who was a CDC epidemiologist for 20 years and is now a research professor at Emory University. “The problem was how the Chinese handled it. What should have changed was the Chinese should have acknowledged it earlier and didn’t.”

Okay. Whatever.

Alex Azar, secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS)said Friday that his agency learned of the coronavirus in early January, based on Redfield’s conversations with “Chinese colleagues.”

And how long did the Trump administration (and some members of Congress) hold that information before even beginning to respond to it?

On Feb. 25, the first day the CDC told the American public to prepare for an outbreak at home, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo accused China of mishandling the epidemic through its “censorship” of medical professionals and media.

[...]

After the epidemic exploded and China had imposed strict quarantines, Trump administration officials complained that the Chinese had censored information about the outbreak and that the United States had been unable to get American disease experts into the country to help contain the spread.

Apparently, they had at least one there and pulled her out.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.