By Nick Valencia | August 11, 2025
ATLANTA— The facts are staggering enough: A man approached the guard shack outside the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Clifton Road campus in Atlanta and opened fire. When he failed to gain access, he crossed the street and, from the Emory Point CVS, unleashed at least 189 rounds at the nation’s leading public health agency. At least 85 windows were shattered. More than 100 doors were damaged. A law enforcement officer was killed.
What followed was just as striking: nothing. No acknowledgment from the White House that federal property had been attacked. No statement about the assault on the CDC — the institution that, for all its flaws, remains the nation’s leading public health apparatus. In Washington, the gunfire might as well have been silenced before it crossed the Potomac.
Inside the CDC, the emotional fallout is already altering daily life. The agency has made it a mandatory telework day on Monday. It’s believed most people will telework the rest of the week. Some people will never go back there now, said one veteran employee—speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment publicly.
For others, the disappointment has turned into digs at the president.
“Not even the customary thoughts and prayers,” one source added.
The details emerging in the hours after the attack suggest a political and cultural backdrop that public health experts have been warning about for years.
According to initial reports, the gunman — whose name we do not publish — was upset about an illness he blamed on the COVID-19 vaccine. His anger appears to have been shaped in part by the same conspiracy-driven echo chambers that flourished during the pandemic and have continued to metastasize online.
Jessica Malaty Rivera, one of the most respected public health scientists, says this incident underscores the very real dangers of what she calls the “cult-like” devotion of the anti-vaccine movement. Critics like her believe a sustained campaign of misinformation is radicalizing people, driving them to violence, and undermining the safety of public institutions.
Rivera has been among the most vocal critics of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has used his platform to sow doubt about vaccines while insisting he operates in good faith.
But words have consequences. And when leaders traffic in falsehoods, people can and do get hurt like they did on Friday.
For the CDC, the attack is more than an isolated security breach. It’s a reminder that public health, once a largely nonpartisan endeavor, has been pulled into America’s culture wars — and that the people working to contain outbreaks now find themselves potential targets.
For the rest of us, it’s a measure of how far the political temperature has risen when even a hail of bullets against the country’s top disease-control agency fails to draw a word from the nation’s leader.
The administration has downplayed their agenda regarding the CDC... not because it is a trivial matter but because they do not want to raise more public alarm. They are looking to regulate who is worthy of healthcare and who is not. If you are financially stable and can pay for privatized services, then you are "worthy"; if you have fallen ill, are past your prime or not essential to their capitalistic machine then you are deemed a "drain on the system"... expendable. The poor, disabled and elderly will be the initial targets of this overhauled CDC. My fear is that once they have finalized their economic policy changes and treated real science like conspiracy theory fodder, they will embark on a more malevolent agenda... to purge health services for anyone of color. The white nationalism brewing in the wings of this administration believes in eugenics and removing the "poison from the blood of America". Thank you again for your reporting, Nick... it is essential for everyone to see the trajectory we are on and the course correction desperately needed.