Dangers – COOPER GENERAL NEWS

National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases Director Nancy Messonnier speaks today during a press conference at the Department of Health and Human Services on the Coordinated Public Health Response to Coronavirus 2019 (2019-nCoV) January 28, 2020 in Washington, DC .

Samuel Corum

Dr. Nancy Messonnier, the health expert who was one of the first to raise the alarm about the coronavirus threat to the US, is stepping down from her role at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the agency’s director confirmed on Friday.

Messonnier “leaves a strong force of leadership and courage in everything she has done,” said CDC director Rochelle Walensky at a press conference. “I want to wish her all the best in her future endeavors.”

Walensky ignored a reporter’s question as to why Messonnier was recently dismissed from her role as head of the CDC’s Covid Vaccine Task Force.

Messonnier, who has served as director of the agency’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases since 2016, will be leaving the agency effective May 14, several outlets reported on Friday.

She will take on a new role as executive director of pandemic and public health systems at the Skoll Foundation, a California-based organization, she told colleagues in an email.

Walensky received Messonnier’s resignation Friday morning, CDC spokesman Jason McDonald told CNBC.

The resignation was first reported by the Washington Post.

In early 2020, when fewer than 100 cases of Covid had been reported in the US, Messonnier urged the nation to prepare for a massive outbreak that would drastically affect normal life.

“I understand that this whole situation seems overwhelming and that the disturbance of everyday life can be serious. But these things people have to think about now,” Messonnier said in February 2020.

Messonnier’s sharp warnings contrasted sharply with the news from then-President Donald Trump, prompting him to threaten her dismissal.

The former president had falsely tried to reassure the nation that the low number of US Covid cases “will go to zero in a matter of days” and will “miraculously” go away.

More than 32,606,724 Covid infections have been reported in the United States, and at least 580,076 people have died, according to Johns Hopkins University.

This obituary is part of a series about people who died from the coronavirus pandemic. Read about others here.

In late 1983, a member of the Neonatal Department at Fairfax Hospital in Falls Church, Virginia, had a question for Fred Figa, a young pharmacist who was part of the hospital department that researched the safety of new drugs.

A pharmaceutical company unveiled a new vitamin E injection that is marketed under the brand name E-Ferol as a nutritional supplement for premature babies. It seemed harmless enough. Should you buy it?

Mr. Figamade made a series of phone calls and found that the injection had indeed not been verified by the Food and Drug Administration. No, he replied. Wait a moment. Then he alerted federal investigators.

His diligence would save the lives of innumerable babies.

Mr Figa and investigators had encountered a deadly product safety crisis and scandal. Officials backed by Mr. Figa’s persistent research later found that the FDA had failed to take protective measures regarding the side effects of E-Ferol in light-weight newborns – side effects that resulted in the death of 38 infants from organ failure in hospitals in the area led the country.

Mr. Figa became a star witness in Congressional hearings that forced e-Ferol distributor O’Neal, Jones & Feldman Pharmaceuticals to withdraw him from the market in mid-1984.

“He wouldn’t let go of it. He was the kind of person who would follow something to the nth degree, ”said his wife Janice Russell Figa, who was pregnant when Mr. Figa started calling hospitals across the country to map the pattern of problems.

Mr. Figa, who served for decades as an internal legal advisor to the compliance departments of pharmaceutical companies, died on February 16 in a Morristown, New Jersey hospital near his home in Randolph. He was 65 years old. The cause was complications from the coronavirus, his family said.

Together with his wife, two daughters, Elise and Stefanie, survive; a son, Paul; three sisters, Perla Kimball, Felicia Pehrson and Heidi Wolf; and a brother, Romek.

Updated

March 12, 2021, 11:55 a.m. ET

Solomon Fred Figa was born on October 20, 1955 in Portland, Maine, to Jewish refugees who fled the Holocaust: Paul Figa, who started a leather shoe store specializing in moccasins, and Karola (Holzman) Figa, a seamstress. Fred was one of six children.

He graduated from Northeastern University in Boston in 1979 with a Bachelor of Science degree in pharmacy.

Uncovering the problems with E-Ferol, he attended night classes at the law school at George Mason University in Washington and worked part-time for the FDA, which helped him with his investigation. (He graduated from law school in 1986.)

Mr Figa never sought the limelight. At first he refused to testify or speak to reporters, confused that just paying attention to the details of his work – an emphasis learned from tooling and sewing leather in his father’s business – would attract attention.

He was always on the lookout for lurking dangers. His daughter Elise said in a telephone interview that as a teenager she appeared in a community production of “Peter Pan” as Liza, the maid. This role required that she simulate the flight with the wires suspended.

Her father asked to inspect the machine. The director obliges, then Mr. Figa said they were a couple of pirates in the choir for a short time.

“He went to the costume place and got a fake earring and a removable tattoo with a large scar on his cheek and he just had the best time,” Ms. Figa said.

“So he’d be a pirate for about a month every weekend, then he’d go to work as a pharmaceutical lawyer on Monday.”