What about the person whose "negligence and incompetency" allowed the Chinese to commit either the crime of deliberately releasing the virus or hiding the fact that the virus had emerged?
The CDC/US starting in the Bush Admin had established an on ground presence in China to MONITOR the Chinese research community and INSURE that nothing like Covid happened. Or at the very least, to provide first hand knowledge to the US to prevent us from being blindsided in the event of a breakout.
The system worked perfectly thruout both the Bush and Obama Admins, until in the summer of 2019 the Trump Admin cut off the funding (because he wanted to use the funds elsewhere), and the virologist who had manned the role saw her position eliminated and was forced to return to the US.
Again it was the RESPONSIBILITY of the scientist stationed in China to monitor any possible hot spots, and it's no coincidence that after she returned to the US in July 2019, the virus emerged around Nov 2019. Dr Quick may not have been able to prevent the original outbreak. But she sure as hell would have been able to advise US officials as soon as it occurred in Nov, rather than us finding out second hand in Jan 2020.
Trump apologists will resist accepting his culpability, but this aspect of the catastrophe is strictly on him...
"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. 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."
"Zhu and the 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."
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.
www.reuters.com