re: That one thing I simply cannot get past in all of this Coronavirus Mess

Not sure if already mentioned, but it seemed there were vacancies in government positions that were never replaced: Not blaming anyone for the virus.

in order to reduce government bloat, it seems there were no senior administration officials focused solely on combatting such threats and coordinating global health security policy across agencies.

In 2018, National Security Adviser John Bolton had shuttered the NSC’s unit for preparing and responding to pandemics and Luciana Borio, then the director for medical and biodefense preparedness at the National Security Council was not replaced.

Tom Bossert of Homeland Security, was dismissed in 2018. Bossert was an advocate of developing a biodefense strategy for addressing biological attacks and pandemic diseases like influenza. His job was to coordinate a response to global pandemics, and his role when he took office was downgraded to where it no longer reported directly to the president.

Tim Morrison or who led the resulting counterproliferation and biodefense office of NSC left the administration in 2019. Tim Zeimer, was NSC's senior director for global health security and he left and was never replaced. I think the whole global pandemic office was closed down.