A year after a gunman fired on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Atlanta headquarters, killing a DeKalb County police officer, agency employees say they do not feel meaningfully safer than they did that afternoon.
"I don't think we're any safer than we were a year ago," a doctor who still works at the agency told CNN, one of seven current and former staff interviewed who described continuing trauma and a sense of being targeted.
These are employee accounts. They describe how people who staff the country's disease surveillance and outbreak response system experience their workplace, and that is a distinct matter from whether the agency's operations have been measurably impaired, which no independent assessment has established.
The Attack and Its Physical Traces
The shooting occurred on the afternoon of Aug. 8, 2025, a Friday. Staff initially mistook the sound for construction or road work outside their windows.
Daniel Jernigan, then director of the CDC's National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases, was in his fifth-floor office in building 16, the structure closest to the street. Another staffer heard the repetitive noise and tried to tune it out before a colleague stood up and said the group should be concerned.
From a stairwell outside a CVS pharmacy across the street, a 30-year-old man who believed COVID-19 vaccines were harmful and blamed the CDC fired more than 500 rounds from five guns at the main campus, according to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. DeKalb County Police Officer David Rose, among the first officers to respond, was killed. The gunman later killed himself.
More than 180 bullets pierced, cracked or shattered windows in six buildings. Hundreds of employees were held in lockdown for hours. The overhead public address system did not work in several buildings, and a text alert system failed on many phones, leaving staff to rely on messages from friends and news reports. Some workers were trapped in labs in protective gear with no way to get information.
Employees working on immunization issues in particular described feeling personally identified as targets, and many of the bullets broke windows in the building where that staff worked.
Writing in a first-person account for STAT, Jernigan reflected on colleagues accustomed to handling lethal pathogens in high-containment laboratories and to working through outbreaks abroad. "It was briefly more dangerous to sit at a desk in Atlanta than to chase a hemorrhagic fever in the field," he wrote.
The Response Staff Say They Did Not Receive
The grievance employees describe most consistently is not about physical security measures. It is about what federal officials said and did not say.
The record here is mixed rather than empty. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. issued condolences on social media the day after the shooting, writing that no one should face violence while working to protect the health of others, sent an internal email to staff, and visited the campus three days later to survey the damage. On the anniversary, he returned to unveil a plaque and rename a street honoring Rose and other first responders, and spoke to staff alongside outgoing acting CDC Director Jay Bhattacharya.
Staff nonetheless describe those gestures as insufficient. Deb Houry, then the agency's chief medical officer and deputy director for program and science, said employees were traumatized and angry. "We needed to hear across the board that violent rhetoric and attacks were unwarranted," she said, and those statements did not come from other federal officials.
Demetre Daskalakis, who resigned last year as director of the CDC's National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, used sharper language. "He may as well have just pulled out a gun and kept shooting," Daskalakis said. He called the anniversary visit "too little, too late." Staff also noted that President Trump has never made a statement or issued condolences on the shooting.
The department rejects the broader characterization. "Secretary Kennedy unequivocally condemns last year's horrific attack and remains fully committed to the safety and well-being of every CDC employee," said Emily Hilliard, senior press secretary at HHS. "Any claim that the Administration does not take this tragedy or its lasting impact on the CDC workforce seriously is simply false."
Both accounts are on the record, and they conflict. That is the state of the evidence.
The Workforce Numbers Behind the Concern
Employee morale would matter less to public health if the workforce were stable. It is not.
Data from the Office of Personnel Management shows the agency lost more than 3,300 staff over the past fiscal year, roughly one-quarter of its total workforce. Many seasoned leaders have resigned, retired or been fired. Kennedy also removed all 17 members of the agency's vaccine advisory committee and replaced them with his own selections.
Those figures are the reason employee sentiment carries operational weight rather than only human interest. Outbreak response depends on people who can be deployed on short notice, who know the pathogens, and who have institutional relationships with state and local health departments built over years.
Epidemiologists with field experience are not interchangeable with new hires. A specialist who has worked hemorrhagic fever outbreaks, or who maintains the laboratory capacity for a particular pathogen, represents years of accumulated training that cannot be replaced quickly.
That said, no published analysis has established a causal chain from workplace safety concerns to degraded surveillance or slower outbreak response. Departures have multiple documented drivers, and separating the contribution of any one factor would require research that has not been done.
The Practical Stakes for the Public
The relevant question for readers is what the agency does that they depend on. The CDC maintains national surveillance systems tracking measles, West Nile virus, foodborne outbreaks and seasonal respiratory illness; supports state and local health departments; operates reference laboratories; and deploys field teams during emergencies.
Those functions have been under strain this year for reasons documented separately. MedicalDaily has reported on a measles count that has passed last year's total, on an unusually early West Nile season, and on multiple concurrent foodborne outbreak investigations.
Nothing individuals do changes federal staffing. What readers can control is their own reliance on local sources. State and county health departments often hold more current data than national dashboards, publish local exposure notifications, and administer vaccination programs directly. Building the habit of checking a county health department alongside national figures is reasonable regardless of what happens at the federal level. MedicalDaily has also tracked the health secretary's public outreach during the same period.
For people affected by workplace violence, whether at the CDC or elsewhere, employee assistance programs and trauma-focused mental health care are available. One CDC official interviewed said she remains in counseling for post-traumatic stress disorder and that loud noises are still triggering. Symptoms that persist beyond a few weeks are worth raising with a clinician rather than waiting out, and MedicalDaily has covered where community mental health care is expanding.
Key Questions Answered
What happened at the CDC a year ago? On Aug. 8, 2025, a 30-year-old man who blamed the CDC and COVID-19 vaccines for his health fired more than 500 rounds from five guns at the agency's Atlanta headquarters, killing DeKalb County Police Officer David Rose. More than 180 bullets struck windows in six buildings.
What do employees say has changed? Staff who spoke to reporters described continuing trauma and a sense of being targeted, with one current employee saying the agency is no safer than a year ago. Their main stated grievance concerns the adequacy of public support from federal officials.
How has the administration responded? Kennedy issued condolences the day after the attack, visited the campus three days later, and returned on the anniversary to unveil a memorial. An HHS spokesperson said he unequivocally condemns the attack and called claims otherwise false. Staff note that President Trump has never made a statement.
Has the agency's outbreak response been impaired? No published analysis has established that. Employee accounts describe workplace conditions, not measured operational performance, and the two are separate questions.
How much of the workforce has left? Office of Personnel Management data shows the CDC lost more than 3,300 staff over the past fiscal year, roughly one-quarter of its workforce.
Why does staff turnover matter for public health? Outbreak response relies on people who can deploy quickly, know specific pathogens, and hold long-standing relationships with state and local health departments. That experience takes years to rebuild.
What can readers do? Follow state and county health departments alongside national data. Local agencies often publish more current case counts and exposure notifications and administer vaccination programs directly.
