Are you able to speak to the disinformation?
Oddly enough, people who work at the CDC are not best pleased.
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?”
Like, for starters, can you get Evil Kennedy fired and replaced by someone actually qualified as well as not evil?
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.
Yeah no kidding; because of Trump and all that flows from his plane crash administration.
Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who oversees the C.D.C., did not make a statement on Friday. Late Saturday morning, more than 30 minutes after posting photos of his fishing with his family on social media, Mr. Kennedy posted condolences on his official X account and pledged to support C.D.C. employees.
Like that. Silence, then smug selfies, then insultingly late “condolences.” The man is a monstrosity.
Mr. Kennedy has previously called the C.D.C. a “cesspool of corruption” and a fascist enterprise. He has accused the agency’s scientists of ignoring vaccine harms to children, comparing it to the Catholic Church’s coverup of child sex abuse. He has also disparaged the Covid-19 vaccine, calling it the “deadliest” vaccine ever made.
We have seen the cesspool and it is you, Mr. Kennedy.
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.
“I am feeling very angry and very sad for my colleagues that are still at C.D.C.,” said Dr. Havers, who quit after Mr. Kennedy fired all 17 members of a committee that makes recommendations on which shots Americans should take and when.
Evil evil man.
This Russell Vought guy is also a real piece of work.
https://www.wabe.org/breaking-active-shooter-on-emory-university-campus/
(Sarah, quoted, is a friend who was fired in the first wave of DOGE terminations.) Current CDC employees are fairly traumatized, which is what Vought promoted. My best friend works there, who luckily was off that day, but the building she works in was riddled with bullet holes, so this hits pretty close to home for me. The climate Trump and RFK Jr. have created regarding health care and the CDC in particular, made this incident almost inevitable. RFK Jr. needs to be removed from his position. Between that and the Musk DOGE firings, things are not good for us Americans who regard the CDC as the premier health care organization in the country, nay, the world. I blame Trump of course, as there is a direct line of causality that leads me to this condemnation. Trump, the illiterate shitbag who’s making arbitrary decisions (based on vengeance against political rivals), is effectively killing Americans and will continue to do so. This incident was directly related to unscientific anti-vax rhetoric spewed by ignorant, non-medical people, one of which is the new appointed director of the CDC, Monarez, who is the first appointed director in 70 years who holds no medical degree. She’s a political puppet. The whole business from Trump on down is fucking obscene.