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In a large and hastily arranged Zoom call on Saturday, about 800 rattled staffers with the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention tried to make sense of the trauma they endured just a day earlier when a gunman opened fire on the agency’s buildings from across the street. They had been winding down for the weekend when more than 40 bullets smashed through their office windows, whizzing just over their cubicle walls and petrifying staffers in at least four buildings. (Faheld, Goodman and Tirrell, 8/11)

Dr. Elizabeth Soda felt helpless as she frantically messaged her co-workers Friday once a gunman had opened fire on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The 40-year-old, who works at the National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases, had just left her CDC office 30 minutes before the shooting. Now her colleagues were stuck and barricaded inside. (Aaro, 8/10)

The man suspected of opening fire on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's sprawling campus late Friday had blamed the COVID-19 vaccine for making him sick and depressed, according to information gathered by law enforcement and sources close to the suspect. The investigation remains ongoing, and officials caution that the information is preliminary at this time. Patrick White is believed to have struggled with his mental health, according to that information. As he grappled with those issues, sources said, White had become increasingly fixated on the COVID-19 vaccine as a source of his grievances. (Abubey, Pezenik and Margolin, 8/10)

A union representing workers at the CDC said the incident was not random and “compounds months of mistreatment, neglect, and vilification that CDC staff have endured.” It demanded federal officials condemn vaccine misinformation, saying it was putting scientists at risk. Fired But Fighting, a group of laid-off CDC employees, has said HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is directly responsible for the villainization of CDC’s workforce through “his continuous lies about science and vaccine safety, which have fueled a climate of hostility and mistrust.” (Haigh, 8/10)

A former U.S. surgeon general on Sunday said Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. “failed” in his response to the shootings that took place on Friday at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention headquarters in Atlanta. “How you respond to a crisis defines a leader, and quite frankly Secretary Kennedy has failed in his first major test in this regard,” Dr. Jerome Adams told CBS’ Margaret Brennan on “Face the Nation.” (Daniels, 8/10)

�鶹Ů�� Health News and Healthbeat: Inside The CDC, Shooting Adds To Trauma As Workers Describe Projects, Careers In Limbo 

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention workers whose jobs have been reinstated after dizzying Trump administration disruptions say they remain stuck in a budgetary, political, and professional limbo. Their work includes major agency priorities such as HIV testing and monitoring, as well as work at the nation’s leading sexually transmitted infections lab. And while employees are back, many projects have been canceled or stalled, as funding disappears or is delayed. (Miller and Grapevine, 8/11)