From: januarybaybee@gmail.com   
      
   Published 26 February 2020   
      
      
   Did Trump Fire the US Pandemic Response Team?   
      
   Snopes:   TRUE   
   ______________________________       
       
   The Trump administration fired the U.S. pandemic response team in 2018 to cut   
   costs.   
      
   Amid warnings from public health officials that a 2020 outbreak of a new   
   coronavirus could soon become a pandemic involving the U.S., alarmed readers   
   asked Snopes to verify a rumor that U.S. President Donald Trump had “fired   
   the entire pandemic    
   response team two years ago and then didn’t replace them.”   
      
   The claim came from a series of tweets posted by Judd Legum, who runs Popular   
   Information, a newsletter he describes as being about “politics and   
   power.” Legum’s commentary was representative of sharp criticism from   
   Democratic legislators (and some    
   Republicans) that the Trump administration had ill-prepared the country for a   
   pandemic even as one was looming on the horizon.   
      
   Legum outlined a series of cost-cutting decisions made by the Trump   
   administration in preceding years that had gutted the nation’s infectious   
   disease defense infrastructure. The “pandemic response team” firing claim   
   referred to news accounts from    
   Spring 2018 reporting that White House officials tasked with directing a   
   national response to a pandemic had been ousted.   
      
   Rear Adm. Timothy Ziemer abruptly departed from his post leading the global   
   health security team on the National Security Council in May 2018 amid a   
   reorganization of the council by then-National Security Advisor John Bolton,   
   and Ziemer’s team was    
   disbanded. Tom Bossert, whom the Washington Post reported “had called for a   
   comprehensive biodefense strategy against pandemics and biological attacks,”   
   had been fired one month prior.   
      
   It’s thus true that the Trump administration axed the executive branch team   
   responsible for coordinating a response to a pandemic and did not replace it,   
   eliminating Ziemer’s position and reassigning others, although Bolton was   
   the executive at the    
   top of the National Security Council chain of command at the time.   
      
   Legum stated in a follow-up tweet that “Trump also cut funding for the CDC,   
   forcing the CDC to cancel its efforts to help countries prevent    
   nfectious-disease threats from becoming epidemics in 39 of 49 countries in   
   2018. Among the countries abandoned?    
   China.” That information was confirmed by 2018 news reports stating that   
   funding for the CDC’s global disease outbreak prevention efforts had been   
   cut by 80%, including funding for the agency’s efforts in China.   
      
   On Feb. 24, 2020, the Trump administration requested $2.5 billion to address   
   the coronavirus outbreak, an outlay critics asserted might not have been   
   necessary if the previous program cuts had not taken place. Fortune reported   
   of the issue that:   
      
       The cuts could be especially problematic as COVID-19 continues to spread.   
   Health officials are now warning the U.S. is unlikely to be spared, even   
   though cases are minimal here so far.   
      
       “It’s not so much of a question of if this will happen in this country   
   any more but a question of when this will happen and how many people in this   
   country will have severe illness,” Dr. Nancy Messonnier, the director of the   
   National Center for    
   Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, said during a press call [on Feb. 25].   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)