The Shooting at the CDC
Anti-vax conspiracies claim a life, and the government and media shrug
The Centers for Disease Control were sprayed with more than 500 bullets last Friday. The shooter, Patrick Joseph White, 30, had been convinced vaccine side effects were to blame for his depression. He committed suicide on site. David Rose, a DeKalb County police officer, was killed while responding.
The response by RFK, Jr., was slow and described as “tepid” by leaders in public health. Former surgeon general Jerome Adams said:
It took him over 18 hours to issue a tepid response to these horrific shootings, and that’s not even considering how his inflammatory rhetoric in the past have actually contributed to a lot of what’s been going on.
Less than a week later, Kennedy was criticizing the agency’s Covid-19 pandemic response and “overreach.” The shooter blamed Covid-19 vaccines for his mental health problems.
This is the anti-science world we now inhabit. The attacks aren’t theoretical or abstract now. Funding is being cut, the Trump Administration has politicized research priorities, anti-science conspiracy theorists are running roughshod, and gunmen are attacking not only the CDC.
In just over six months, the damage to the scientific infrastructure, the morale of researchers, and the reputation of US scientific leadership has been astonishing.
Worse, we’re becoming inured to it, as news coverage of the CDC shooting has not been a “hair on fire” moment but more of a “well, it’s just another day in dystopia” shrug.
And scientific publishers remain silent, distracted, and unfocused.
Don’t let the bastards win.