Trump threatened to fire top CDC doctor for sounding pandemic alarm in February, reports say

Dr Messonier had warned it was not a question of if this will happen in this country anymore, but when this will happen

President Donald Trump wanted to fire one of the most senior officials at the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), after her dire warnings about the coming pandemic caused the stock market to plummet.

The Wall Street Journal reports that Dr Nancy Messonier’s comments on 25 February, that the CDC was preparing for a pandemic within the US, infuriated Mr Trump.

Dr Messonier, director of the CDC's National Centre for Immunisation and Respiratory Diseases, warned the American public to “prepare for the expectation that this might be bad,” that community spread in the US was expected, and “it’s not so much a question of if this will happen in this country anymore, but a question of when this will happen.”

The president was flying back from his state visit to India at the time and was reportedly angry with Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar for allowing Dr Messonnier to scare people — and the market.

He then threatened to have her fired from her position at the CDC.

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Mr Azar held a follow up press conference to try and quell any panic, but it was too late to undo the damage.

Pro-Trump figures tried to discredit Dr Messonnier and dismissed the coronavirus as simply “the common cold” being “weaponised” against Mr Trump.

The next day the president appointed Vice President Mike Pence as head of the federal response to the coronavirus.

This move effectively sidelined Mr Azar, but Dr Messonnier kept her job.

In the three weeks between Dr Messonnier’s comments and the announcement of a nationwide lockdown on 16 March, the number of cases of Covid-19 in the US rose from 14 to 4,500. The Dow Jones Industrial Average began its precipitous fall on 21 February, dropping from 28,992 to 20,188 by 16 March.

As of Thursday morning, the US has 855,435 confirmed cases of Covid-19 and has recorded 47,992 deaths.