https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-fire-pandemic-team/
Did Trump Fire the US Pandemic Response Team? As a new coronavirus spread
in 2020, so did concerns about the United States' preparedness for a
potential pandemic.

   - Bethania Palma <https://www.snopes.com/author/bethania/>


   - Published 26 February 2020

Image via Jessica McGowan/Getty Images
<https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/exterior-of-the-center-for-disease-control-headquarters-is-news-photo/457163926>
Claim

The Trump administration fired the U.S. pandemic response team in 2018 to
cut costs.
Rating
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Origin

Amid warnings
<https://www.cnbc.com/2020/02/25/us-health-officials-say-coronavirus-will-likely-cause-a-global-pandemic.html>
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
<https://twitter.com/JuddLegum/status/1232050502025781257> 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
<https://www.politico.com/news/2020/02/25/trump-officials-defend-coronavirus-request-117329>
from Democratic legislators (and some Republicans) that the Trump
administration had ill-prepared
<https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/01/31/coronavirus-china-trump-united-states-public-health-emergency-response/>
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
<https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/tom-bossert-trump-s-homeland-security-adviser-resign-n864321>
accounts
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2018/05/10/top-white-house-official-in-charge-of-pandemic-response-exits-abruptly/>
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
<https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/tom-bossert-trump-s-homeland-security-adviser-resign-n864321>
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 <https://twitter.com/JuddLegum/status/1232051346796371968> in
a follow-up tweet that “Trump also cut funding for the CDC, forcing the CDC
to cancel its efforts to help countries prevent infectious-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
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2018/02/01/cdc-to-cut-by-80-percent-efforts-to-prevent-global-disease-outbreak/>
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
<https://fortune.com/2020/02/26/coronavirus-covid-19-cdc-budget-cuts-us-trump/>
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].

The coronavirus was first detected in Wuhan, China, in the winter of 2019,
and cases spread
<https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/locations-confirmed-cases.html>
around the globe. The U.S. had 57 confirmed cases
<https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-in-us.html> as of this
writing, while globally, roughly
<https://www.cbsnews.com/live-updates/coronavirus-outbreak-death-toll-infections-latest-news-updates-2020-02-25/>
80,000 patients had been sickened with the virus and 3,000 had died. As of
yet <https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/25/health/coronavirus-us.html>, no
vaccine or pharmaceutical treatment for the new coronavirus. Data from
China suggests the coronavirus has a higher
<https://www.statnews.com/2020/02/25/new-data-from-china-buttress-fears-about-high-coronavirus-fatality-rate-who-expert-says/>
fatality rate than the seasonal flu, although outcomes depend on factors
such as the age and underlying health of the patient.

Readers can find the latest coronavirus information from the CDC here
<https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-nCoV/index.html>.