Man fired 180 shots, breaking 150 windows, in CDC attack
It may take weeks or even months to replace windows and clean up the damage, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention personnel said.
A Georgia man who had blamed the COVID-19 vaccine for making him depressed and suicidal opened fire late Friday, killing a police officer. No one at CDC was injured.
The shooter was stopped by CDC security guards before driving to a nearby pharmacy and opening fire late Friday afternoon, a law enforcement official has told the AP. The official wasn't authorized to publicly discuss the investigation and spoke on condition of anonymity. The 30-year-old man, Patrick Joseph White, later died, but authorities haven't said whether he was killed by police or killed himself.
Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. toured the CDC campus on Monday. CDC security pointed out broken windows across buildings, including the main guard booth, according to a Department of Health and Human Services statement.
HHS Deputy Secretary Jim O'Neill and CDC Director Susan Monarez accompanied him, according to the statement.
Kennedy also visited the DeKalb County Police Department, where he met with the police chief. Later. He also met privately with the widow of the fallen officer, David Rose.
Monarez posted a statement on social media Friday night that said at least four CDC buildings were hit in the attack.
The extent of the damage became more clear during a weekend CDC leadership meeting. Two CDC employees who were told about what was discussed at the meeting described details to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to reveal the information. Details also were also in an agency memo seen by an AP reporter.
Building 21, which houses Monarez's office, was hit by the largest number of bullets. CDC officials did not say if her office was hit.
CDC employees were advised to work from home this week.
'No one should face violence while working to protect the health of others,' Kennedy said in a Saturday statement, adding top federal health officials were 'actively supporting CDC staff.'
He did not speak to the media during his visit Monday.
In a call with the media on Monday night, some unionized CDC employees said they are calling for more heavily armed guards, bulletproof glass, a better alert system and more extensive evacuation planning for disabled employees and other vulnerable staff.
A retired CDC official, Stephan Monroe, said he worried about the long-term impact the attack would have on young scientists' willingness to go to work for the government.
'I'm concerned that this is this is going to be a generational hit,' said Monroe, speaking to a reporter near the corner where a poster had been set up in honor of Rose.
Kennedy was a leader in a national anti-vaccine movement before President Donald Trump selected him to oversee federal health agencies and has made false and misleading statements about the safety and effectiveness of about COVID-19 shots and other vaccines.
Years of false rhetoric about vaccines and public health was bound to 'take a toll on people's mental health,' and 'leads to violence,' said Tim Young, a CDC employee who retired in April.
Dr. Jerome Adams, the US surgeon general during Trump's first administration, said Sunday that health leaders should appreciate the weight of their words.
'We have to understand people are listening,' Adams told 'Face the Nation' on CBS. 'When you make claims that have been proven false time and time again about safety and efficacy of vaccines, that can cause unintended consequences.'
CDC employees are now taking steps to become less visible, including not wearing their public health service uniform to work, said Yolanda Jacobs, president of Local 2883 of the American Federation of Government Employees.
She recalled when CDC employees were happy to be approached by neighbors or others with public health questions. 'Now, it's at the point we're afraid to have those types of conversations with anybody, because we don't know who they are and we don't know what rhetoric they've ingested,' she said.
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Growing skepticism about alcohol's benefits About two-thirds of 18- to 34-year-olds believe moderate drinking is unhealthy, according to the new poll, up from about 4 in 10 in 2015. Older adults are less likely to see alcohol as harmful — about half of Americans age 55 or older believe this — but that's a substantial increase, too. In 2015, only about 2 in 10 adults age 55 or older thought alcohol was bad for their health. In the past, moderate drinking was thought to have some benefits. That idea came from imperfect studies that largely didn't include younger people and couldn't prove cause and effect. Now the scientific consensus has shifted, and several countries recently lowered their alcohol consumption recommendations. Earlier this year, the outgoing U.S. surgeon general, Vivek Murthy, recommended a label on bottles of beer, wine and liquor that would clearly outline the link between alcohol consumption and cancer. 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13 minutes ago
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The findings of the poll, which was conducted in July, indicate that after years of many believing that moderate drinking was harmless — or even beneficial — worries about alcohol consumption are taking hold. According to Gallup's data, even those who consume alcohol are drinking less. The federal government is updating new dietary guidelines, including those around alcohol. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, government data showed U.S. alcohol consumption was trending up. But other government surveys have shown a decline in certain types of drinking, particularly among teenagers and young adults. This comes alongside a new drumbeat of information about alcohol's risks. While moderate drinking was once thought to have benefits for heart health, health professionals in recent years have pointed to overwhelming evidence that alcohol consumption leads to negative health outcomes and is a leading cause of cancer. Younger adults have been quicker than older Americans to accept that drinking is harmful, but older adults are coming around to the same view. About two-thirds of 18- to 34-year-olds believe moderate drinking is unhealthy, according to the new poll, up from about 4 in 10 in 2015. Older adults are less likely to see alcohol as harmful — about half of Americans age 55 or older believe this — but that's a substantial increase, too. In 2015, only about 2 in 10 adults age 55 or older thought alcohol was bad for their health. In the past, moderate drinking was thought to have some benefits. That idea came from imperfect studies that largely didn't include younger people and couldn't prove cause and effect. Now the scientific consensus has shifted, and several countries recently lowered their alcohol consumption recommendations. Earlier this year, the outgoing U.S. surgeon general, Vivek Murthy, recommended a label on bottles of beer, wine and liquor that would clearly outline the link between alcohol consumption and cancer. The federal government's current dietary guidelines recommend Americans not drink or, if they do consume alcohol, men should limit themselves to two drinks a day or fewer while women should stick to one or fewer. Gallup's director of U.S. social research, Lydia Saad, said shifting health advice throughout older Americans' lives may be a reason why they have been more gradual than young adults to recognize alcohol as harmful. 'Older folks may be a little more hardened in terms of the whiplash that they get with recommendations,' Saad said. 'It may take them a little longer to absorb or accept the information. Whereas, for young folks, this is the environment that they've grown up in ... in many cases, it would be the first thing young adults would have heard as they were coming into adulthood.' The government is expected to release new guidelines later this year, under the directive of health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has promised big changes. Kennedy has not hinted at how the alcohol recommendations may shift. Slightly more than half of Americans, 54%, report that they drink alcohol — a low in Gallup's data that is especially pronounced among women and young adults. Young Americans' alcohol consumption has been trending downward for years, accelerating the overall decline in alcohol consumption. In sharp contrast with Gallup's findings two decades ago, when young adults were likeliest to report drinking, young adults' drinking rate is now slightly below middle-aged and older adults. Americans' reported drinking is among the lowest since the question was first asked in 1939. For most of the last few decades, at least 6 in 10 Americans have reported drinking alcoholic beverages, only dipping below that point a few times in the question's history. Even if concerns about health risks aren't causing some adults to give up alcohol entirely, these worries could be influencing how often they drink. The survey found that adults who think moderate drinking is bad for one's health are just as likely as people who don't share those concerns to report that they drink, but fewer of the people with health worries had consumed alcohol recently. About half of those who worry moderate drinking is unhealthy said they had a drink in the previous week, compared with about 7 in 10 who did not think drinking was bad for their health. Overall, only about one-quarter of Americans who drink said they had consumed alcohol in the prior 24 hours, a record low in the survey. Roughly 4 in 10 said that it had been more than a week since they had poured a drink.
