In the wake of a fatal shooting at the headquarters of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta on Friday, CDC employees and others professionally involved in public health work are expressing concerns over the increase in extremist views that might impact their safety.
A man identified as Patrick Joseph White, 30, of Kennesaw, Georgia, was identified on Saturday, August 9, one day after he had opened fire across from the CDC headquarters, killing a police officer and spraying gunfire, shattering numerous windows in the headquarters complex. He was killed in a confrontation with police during the incident; officers had prevented him from entering the CDC headquarters itself.
In the wake of that attack, individuals working in the CDC and in public health-related functions, are expressing concern, after it was revealed that White had acted based on an incorrect belief that the COVID-19 vaccine had caused him physical problems.
ABC News’s Faith Abubey, Sasha Pezenik, and Josh Margolin, referencing the Georgia Bureau of Investigations’ initial investigation, wrote on Sunday, August 10, that “Patrick White is believed to have struggled with his mental health, according to that information. As he grappled with those issues, sources said, White had become increasingly fixated on the COVID-19 vaccine as a source of his grievances. Several Kennesaw residents who knew the 30-year-old suspected shooter told ABC News they had heard White express similar angry and conspiracy-minded sentiments. One neighbor, who asked not to be named, said White would sit on her porch for long stretches, often complaining that after he got the COVID-19 shot, he had lost a lot of weight, developed problems swallowing and gastrointestinal issues. And, the neighbor said he believed the media and government weren’t covering it.” The ABC News reporters quoted the neighbor as sating that “He thought the vaccines were killing him and that people needed to know the truth,” they wrote, with the neighbor “adding that she didn’t agree with him, but would listen.”
The impact has been visceral upon federal workers. KFF HealthNews’s Andy Miller and Rebecca Grapevine wrote on Monday, August 11, that Friday’s attack added to the stress of CDC staff members, even as many are stuck in a limbo around their jobs. They quoted a lab scientist at the CDC as telling them that “We feel threatened from inside, and, obviously, now from outside. The trauma runs so differently in all of us. And is this the last straw for some of us? The overall morale — would you go back in the building and you could be shot at?”
Both reporters, who are on the news service’s “Healthbeat” desk, wrote that “Healthbeat interviewed 11 CDC workers, who offered a rare glimpse into conditions at the agency. All but one had been fired then offered their jobs back. Most have worked on HIV-related projects for at least several years. All spoke on the condition of anonymity, citing a fear of retaliation. They fear their employment, in the HIV scientist’s terms, ‘is on shaky ground.’” And they quoted an HIV epidemiologist as saying that “I’m concerned there is chaos and that we lost ground on HIV prevention” from reductions in data collection and layoffs of local public health workers, an HIV epidemiologist said. “I feel like a pawn on a chessboard.”
In response to the reporters’ inquiry, they reported that HHS spokesperson Emily Hilliard gave them a statement that began thus: “Under Secretary Kennedy’s leadership, the nation’s critical public health functions remain intact and effective. The Trump administration is committed to protecting essential services — whether it’s supporting coal miners and firefighters through NIOSH, safeguarding public health through lead prevention, or researching and tracking the most prevalent communicable diseases. HHS is streamlining operations without compromising mission-critical work. Enhancing the health and well-being of all Americans remains our top priority,” Hilliard said in the statement.
The KFF HealthNews people added that “The workers received some positive news July 31, when a Senate committee voted to keep CDC funding at more than $9 billion, near its current level. ‘It is very encouraging, but that’s only one step in the appropriations process,” an HIV research at the CDC told them.
“Still,” they wrote, “under the Trump administration’s budget request, the CDC’s programs on HIV face uncertainty. John Brooks, who retired as chief medical officer of the CDC’s Division of HIV Prevention last year, expressed concern over the Ending the HIV Epidemic initiative. Launched in President Donald Trump’s first term, it ‘breathed new life into HIV prevention,’ Brooks said.”
Over the weekend, the New York Times’s Apoorva Mandavilli wrote an extensive article on the set of issues, under the headline, “After Years of Anger Directed at C.D.C., Shooting Manifests Worst Fears.” She wrote that The day after a lone gunman opened fire on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, killing a police officer and shattering windows across the agency’s campus, employees were reeling from shock, fear and rage.
“’We’re mad this has happened,’ Dr. Debra Houry, the C.D.C.’s chief medical officer, said in a large group call Saturday morning with Susan Monarez, the agency’s newly confirmed director, who tried to reassure them. Another employee on the call, a recording of which was obtained by The New York Times, asked Dr. Monarez: ‘Are you able to speak to the misinformation, the disinformation that caused this issue? And what your plan forward is to ensure this doesn’t happen again?’ The investigation into the shooting and the gunman’s potential motives was still in early stages on Saturday. But law enforcement officials said that the suspect identified in the shooting had become fixated with the coronavirus vaccine, believing that it was the cause of his physical ailments. Inside the C.D.C., the shooting was viewed as part of a pattern in which health workers have been targets of political, verbal and physical assaults on them and their workplaces,” Mandavilli noted.
And she quoted Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, the director of the CDC’s respiratory diseases division, as telling Dr. Monarez “on the call that employees wanted to see a plan for their safety and an acknowledgment that the attack was not just ‘a shooting that just happened across the street with some stray bullets.’ Dr. Daskalakis was not in his office when its windows were pierced by one of the gunman’s bullets. Many Americans, and even some top federal health officials in the Trump administration, have blamed the C.D.C. for lockdowns, school closings and vaccine mandates, even when some of those decisions were made by state and local governments, or businesses,” Mandavilli noted. And she quoted Dr. Anne Zink, a former president of the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials who served as Alaska’s chief medical officer until last year, as saying that “I am heartbroken, angry and somehow not surprised,” noting that “Threats against her have increased even though she is no longer a government official.”
Mandavilli wrote that “The New York Times spoke with or texted a dozen C.D.C. scientists on Saturday, who discussed the shooting on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation. They described being terrified as bullets shattered the glass windows, and some recounted the chilling sight of casings littered in front of the C.D.C. In interviews, the employees conveyed sadness about the police officer who had died trying to keep them safe, and a feeling of betrayal and devastation at being demonized while working to improve Americans’ health.”
Further, Mandavilli wrote, “Dr. Fiona Havers, who resigned from her position as a senior C.D.C. adviser on vaccine policy earlier this year, was on lockdown at Emory University Hospital while visiting a colleague. She heard the sirens, and stayed in close contact with her friends and former colleagues, including in a 900-person chat group where C.D.C. employees shared terrifying details of the shooting.” And she quoted Dr. Havers, who quit after Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. fired all 17 members of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices in June, as saying that “I am feeling very angry and very sad for my colleagues that are still at C.D.C. This was a major attack on a federal facility.”
Meanwhile, NBC News’s Berkeley Lovelace Jr., Priya Sridhar, and Daniela Hernandez, wrote on Monday morning, as the news emerged that Secretary Kennedy was planning to visit the CDC headquarters on Monday afternoon, that, “For some employees, the shooting highlighted growing hostility toward public health officials, which they feel has been shaped by Kennedy’s long history of spreading vaccine misinformation, including the Covid vaccine.” And they quoted CDC employee Elizabeth Soda as saying that “There’s a lot of misinformation, a lot of really dangerous rhetoric that’s currently being spread by the current administration, that makes us seem like villains, that makes us seem like our work is setting out to hurt people. So it’s not at all surprising, right, that people are going to listen to our leaders.”
And they quoted Dr. Peter Chin-Hong, infectious disease specialist at the University of California, San Francisco, who said that the Covid vaccine has become an easy scapegoat — a symbol of all the losses the pandemic inflicted on people, including loss of life, physical and mental health and personal freedoms. ‘The vaccine is something you could focus on, instead of a general feeling of loss,’ he told them.
The shooting took place just a few days after Secretary Kennedy had announced the cancellation of contracts for the high-volume production of mRNA-based vaccines, including the vaccine for COVID-19.
This is a developing story. Healthcare Innovation will bring readers new developments as they emerge.