Missing from the discussion is the whole debacle around the HHS staff that was sent to check the repatriated American citizens from Wuhan, who had no protection, were not trained, and were released back into the general public without further monitoring.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/27/us/politics/coronavirus-u...
According to the Washington Post, the people from the CDC who interacted with the quarantined patients all had full protective gear.
Allegedly there were social workers from HHS also sent to help assist who were not trained in how to don full gear and so were wearing just masks and gloves.
Note this all happened back at the end of January. So it seems unlikely that anyone was actually exposed, unless you think that there are HHS workers who got sick and it was kept out of the news.
That doesn't follow, both because the incubation period is now thought to be as long as 28 days and because infected individuals can be asymptomatic.
A study of 1,099 patients with laboratory-confirmed Covid-19 from 552 hospitals in 30 provinces, autonomous regions, and municipalities in China through January 29, 2020.
"The median incubation period was 4 days (interquartile range, 2 to 7)."
New England Journal of Medicine, Feb 28, 2020
Edit: I found reference to various leadership positions that would help respond to a pandemic be eliminated or left vacant [0], though I think that says something a bit different (still bad though) than the entire US pandemic response capability, or "unit", being axed.
[0]https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-fire-pandemic-team/
Not sure how much more explicit that 2018 WaPo article can be.
The previous administration converted the highly successful infrastructure they built up while responding to the Ebola virus into permanent infrastructure which was quickly dismantled by the current administration.
Quoting: "funding for the CDC’s global disease outbreak prevention efforts had been reduced by 80%, including funding for the agency’s efforts in China. But that was the result of the anticipated depletion of previously allotted funding, not a direct cut by the Trump administration.
Since January 2019, actual funding (vs. requested/proposed funding) is controlled by the House leadership of the opposition party.