In Atlanta, a man reportedly upset over COVID-19 vaccinations opened fire at the headquarters of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, resulting in a police officer’s death and causing alarm at the CDC. This incident is part of a series of assaults targeting healthcare professionals amid the sustained aftermath of the pandemic.

According to several public health officials, the shooting shouldn’t come as a surprise due to the persistent spread of false information and hostility surrounding vaccine safety.

Paul Offit, who helped develop a rotavirus vaccine, noted, “Anyone championing science or vaccinations is likely to receive unnerving hate mail, phone calls, or even death threats at some point.”

In recent years, as hospitals were overwhelmed with unvaccinated individuals, those on school boards, as well as local leaders and doctors, often faced public harassment with jeers comparing them to groups like the Taliban and Nazis, sometimes escalating to violence.

The growing distrust and aggression have been further intensified by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., U.S. Health Secretary, explains Offit, who leads the vaccine education center at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.

Kennedy has been prominent in disseminating vaccine misinformation, frequently using charged rhetoric to accuse scientists and public health officials of causing widespread harm. His comments have led to threats and intimidation against those he targets.

Kennedy denounces violence but criticizes CDC’s work

Kennedy, who toured the CDC campus on Monday, said no one should face violence while working to protect the health of others and called political violence wrong. But he went on to criticize the agency’s pandemic response.

“One of the things that we saw during COVID is that the government was overreaching in its efforts to persuade the public to get vaccinated, and they were saying things that are not always true,” Kennedy said during a television interview with Scripps News later in the day.

A spokesperson for Kennedy blasted any notion that blamed vaccine misinformation for Friday’s attack.

“This narrative is pure fiction, built on anonymous complaints and a willful disregard for the facts,” said Andrew Nixon of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. “Secretary Kennedy is not advancing an ‘anti-vaccine agenda’ — he is advancing a pro-safety, pro-transparency, and pro-accountability agenda.”

Authorities have said that 30-year-old Patrick Joseph White had written about his discontent with the COVID-19 vaccine before he opened fire on the CDC.

White also had verbalized thoughts of suicide, which led to law enforcement being contacted several weeks before the shooting, according to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. White died at the scene of a self-inflicted gunshot wound on Friday after killing DeKalb County Police Officer David Rose.

Shooting rattles CDC campus

Following the attack, CDC employees were asked to scrape off old CDC parking decals from their vehicles. But even before that, some workers had taken steps to become less visible, including not wearing their public health service uniform, said Yolanda Jacobs, a union leader who represents some CDC workers.

The CDC’s new director told employees this week that no act of violence can diminish their mission to protect public health.

“We know that misinformation can be dangerous. Not only to health, but to those that trust us and those we want to trust,” Dr. Susan Monarez told employees during an “all-hands” meeting Tuesday, her first since the attack capped her first full week on campus as director.

The federal agency, tasked with tracking diseases and responding to health threats, has been hit by widespread staff cuts, key resignations and heated controversy over long-standing CDC vaccine policies upended by Kennedy.

“What happened on Friday is a direct result of that misinformation,” said Sarah Boim, a former CDC worker whose job was targeted for elimination earlier this year. “Health Secretary Kennedy is one of the biggest pushers of misinformation.”

The shooting, she said, left her in tears.

“My friends and family still work in those buildings,” she said. “My mom works in one of those buildings.”

In the aftermath, officials are assessing security and encouraging staff to report any new threats, including those based on misinformation about the CDC and its vaccine work.

Anti-vaccine tension has been building

Despite its prominence since the pandemic, anti-vaccine rhetoric leading to harassment and violence took root before then.

In 2019, an anti-vaccine activist assaulted California state Sen. Richard Pan, streaming it live on Facebook, after Pan sponsored a bill to make it more difficult to get a vaccine exemption. Another threw blood at Pan and other lawmakers.

The attacks came after Kennedy spoke outside the California Capitol, two large posters behind him featured Pan’s image, with the word “LIAR” stamped across his face in blood-red paint.

Pan, a pediatrician, blames Kennedy for what happened then and now at the CDC.

“And you wonder why someone would go shoot up the CDC,” Pan said. “Because he basically told them that those are the people you should hurt.”

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Hollingsworth reported from Kansas City, Missouri, and Seewer reported from Toledo, Ohio.