It was nearly two weeks ago when a gunman opened fire in Atlanta near the campuses of both the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Emory University, killing a police officer who was responding to calls of an active shooter. The suspect, who did not survive the assault, was reportedly fixated on the Covid vaccine, which he blamed for his health problems.
The Georgia Bureau of Investigation later told the public that the shooter fired nearly 200 rounds at the CDC headquarters, adding that authorities recovered five guns and “over 500 shell casings” from the scene.
Not surprisingly, the violence terrified CDC officials and scientists, many of whom are looking to their boss to take their concerns seriously. Reuters reported:
More than 750 U.S. Department of Health and Human Services staff have urged Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to guarantee federal health workers’ safety after a shooting this month at CDC buildings in Atlanta, according to a letter released on Wednesday. The signatories, including former leaders at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention such as Anne Schuchat, a former principal deputy director, urged HHS to tighten emergency procedures and alerts by September 2.
But emergency procedures and alerts are just part of a larger appeal. The same group of officials — CDC personnel were joined by staff at the National Institutes of Health and other HHS agencies — pressed Kennedy to stop contributing to the underlying problem.
“Stop spreading inaccurate health information,” the joint letter read, adding, “Cease and publicly disavow the ongoing dissemination of false and misleading claims about vaccines, infectious disease transmission, and America’s public health institutions.”
The same statement went on to explain, “When a federal health agency is under attack, America’s health is under attack. When the federal workforce is not safe, America is not safe. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., is complicit in dismantling America’s public health infrastructure and endangering the nation’s health by repeatedly spreading inaccurate health information.”
Their concerns are well grounded. The nation’s health secretary is, by any fair measure, a career conspiracy theorist, who has a lengthy record of promoting bizarre and unscientific ideas. In the wake of deadly violence at the CDC, it’s hardly outlandish for HHS officials to urge Kennedy to be more responsible and curtail his habit of peddling nonsense. For his part, Kennedy did condemn the recent shooting in Atlanta in a short message published to social media, but the Cabinet secretary waited until a day after the violence, and he posted his statement after publishing images of himself fishing. It didn’t exactly signal urgency and seriousness, though it did top Donald Trump’s reaction: To date, the president hasn’t commented at all on the shooting that left a police officer dead. Time will tell whether Kennedy takes the pressure seriously, although it’s difficult to be optimistic: The day before the joint statement from HHS officials, the secretary pushed a new conspiracy theory about the American Academy of Pediatrics after it dared to provide the public with accurate information about vaccines.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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