Flowers are seen below a handwritten sign outside the Centers For Disease Control headquarters in Atlanta on Aug. 9, 2025, following a shooting that left a responding police officer dead.
Elijah Nouvelage / Getty Images
About a year ago, a gunman opposed to the COVID-19 vaccine opened fire on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s headquarters in Atlanta, killing a responding police officer before committing suicide. There’s still damage from the attack that hasn’t been repaired, according to Yolanda Jacobs, the president of the union local for CDC HQ employees. Between the shooting, staff cuts and leadership turnover, staffers say they are being pushed to the brink. While some are cautiously optimistic about the agency’s new director, they also feel the administration is hostile toward the CDC workforce, pointing to rhetoric from senior leaders during events associated with the one-year anniversary of the attack. “The last 18 months have been hell for a lot of CDC employees,” Jacobs said during a virtual press conference on Aug. 7. “You know how they say ‘taking you to hell and back,’ we haven’t gotten back — we’re still in hell.” As part of commemorations on Aug. 7, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. visited CDC’s headquarters where he met with the family of slain police officer David Rose and participated in a fireside chat with agency employees. According to Jacobs, who did not attend the chat, employees described the town hall as more “badgering and beating down the employees versus we’re here and we’re going to lend support.” “I do think that it stepped away from being something beautiful — commemorating the death of someone who sacrificed his life for us — and it turned into more of a political fest,” she said. Another CDC staffer, who preferred to be unnamed due to fears of retaliation, said that employees feel senior officials — such as Kennedy and National Institutes of Health Director Jay Bhattacharya, who has been leading the CDC until the new head is sworn in — are trying to blame the workforce for last year’s shooting.“A theme that Bhattacharya always comes back to when he's talking to us is that basically ‘We need to listen, and we don't respect people and the whole reason nobody believes in public health — or trusts public health — is because of us not listening to people,’” she said. “It's pretty obvious that they're victim blaming and really telling us it's our fault that we got shot up.” In addition, a CDC employee who attended the fireside chat shared a photo with Government Executive of a poster featuring Bhattacharya as a wrestler to thank him for his leadership at the agency.
