A top health figure who captured the nation’s attention while working under then-President Donald Trump will serve on a task force advising the Decatur schools about COVID-19.
Dr. Nancy Messonnier, who until last spring was director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, has been named to Decatur’s health advisory team along with nine other doctors, epidemiologists and public health experts, including local health director Dr. Sandra Valenciano.
Messonnier caught public attention in early 2020 when she announced that the United States should prepare for an unprecedented health crisis, prompting the stock market to tumble further.
“Disruptions to everyday life may be severe, but people might want to start thinking about that now,” she said in February 2020, The Washington Post recalled in an article in May 2021 about her departure from the CDC. Weeks after that comment, schools and universities across the country and in Georgia would close in reaction to the arrival of the coronavirus.
Messonnier was a top spokesperson on COVID-19 until she contradicted the White House’s reassuring messaging, according to the Post article. Then-candidate Joe Biden would cite her to fault Trump’s handling of the outbreak.
Around that time, Messonnier talked to her kids over breakfast about preparing for “significant disruption,” USA Today reported in March 2020, days before Georgia shut down. The Decatur parent also sent an email to Decatur’s superintendent at the time, David Dude, to ask him how the district planned to address the looming threat; he told the newspaper that she offered her support then in planning for it.
Messonnier left the CDC in May and is now executive director for pandemic prevention and health systems at the Skoll Foundation, in California.
“I think that’s great that someone with that level of expertise is on the panel,” said Catherine Anderson, who has a child attending City Schools of Decatur. “And I think it’s great that she’s willing to spend her time and energy serving the school system.”
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