Remember the CDC shooter incident in August? Pseudoscience can be deadly in more ways than one

It’s worth recalling that in August there was a big shooting incident in Georgia at a Centers for Disease Control building. There were a lot of shots fired but no one was injured or killed, except for the shooter who committed suicide.

The shooting started just before 5 p.m. Friday at a CVS drugstore directly across from the CDC’s main entrance. DeKalb County police officer David Rose arrived as White fired on the CDC complex; on Tuesday, investigators confirmed Rose was fatally shot by White. …

Of the nearly 500 shots fired, about 200 struck six CDC buildings on the campus, which is located near Emory University on the eastern edge of Atlanta.

Most of those shots were fired by a long gun, investigators said – one of the five weapons White had stolen from his father. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives has determined all the firearms belonged to White’s father. (1)

There was some indication from documents the shooter wrote that he was an anti-vaxer. But apparently there was no evidence that he explicitly linked those beliefs to the attack, though it was a CDC building he attacked. So that’s certainly a plausible assumption.

This guy committed an act of terror that could very well have killed many people.

But the Trump 2.0 regime wants to label people who criticize brutal ICE raids as “terrorists”?

Trump’s Secretary of Health and Human Services, Robert Kennedy, Jr., seemed to want to minimize the potential violent fanaticism that could be generated by anti-vaxxer conspiracy talk:

Jeff Williams, who oversees safety at the CDC, told employees there is “no information suggesting additional threats currently.”

“This is a targeted attack on the CDC related to COVID-19,” Williams said. “All indications are that this was an isolated event involving one individual.” …

Kennedy toured the CDC campus on Monday, accompanied by Monarez. “No one should face violence while working to protect the health of others,” Kennedy said in a statement Saturday, without addressing the potential impact of anti-vaccine rhetoric. ...

Although law enforcement officials have made clear the shooter was targeting the public health agency over the COVID-19 vaccine, Kennedy said in the interview that not enough is known about his motives. He described political violence as “wrong,” but went on to criticize the agency’s pandemic response.

“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. [my emphasis] (2)

The antivaxxer movement, which was given a major boost by an ill-advised decision by a decision by the respected British medical journal Lancet to publish a (later retracted) article in 1998 alleging a link between children receiving measles-mumps-rubella vaccinations. (3)

Donald Trump encouraged anti-vax pseudoscience during his firm Presidential term. And with RFK, Jr. now as the Trump 2.0 HHS Secretary, promotion of pseudoscience received a powerful boost at the same time they are reducing some of the important public health initiatives the federal government has provided in the past.

Anti-science conspiracy theories are not confined to the far right and few of them produce direct violent attacks like that of the CDC shooter. But there is a lot of fuzzy thinking out there, which the radical right in particular has political reasons to encourage.

But so far, antivaxxer extremist violence has not yet produce the kind of death toll that COVID inflicted during the pandemic, as Michael Mann and Peter Hotez put it:

Anti-vaccine activism took an even darker turn during the COVID-19 pandemic when more than 200,000 Americans needlessly perished because they refused COVID-19 vaccines during the delta and BA.1 omicron waves of 2021–2022. This occurred when the anti-vaccine movement fell under a new banner of “health freedom” in conservative circles. [my emphasis] (4)

And they warn:

Anti-science is now a lethal force that threatens human civilization. We can no longer fight climate change and pandemics unless we can find a means to defuse the anti-science bomb that threatens our future. So far, we are losing this battle. While time remains, the window of opportunity is beginning to close ...

An animation from the New York Times explains the basic approach of the antivaxxers: (5)

  

Notes:

(1) Gunman in CDC shooting fired nearly 500 shots after breaking into his father’s gun safe. CNN 08/12/2025. <https://edition.cnn.com/2025/08/12/us/cdc-atlanta-shooting-shots-windows> (Accessed: 2025-07-11).

(2) Kramon, Charlotte & Masrtin, Jeff (2025): Shooter attacked CDC headquarters to protest COVID-19 vaccines. AP News 08/12/2025. https://apnews.com/article/cdc-shooting-georgia-gunman-slain-officer-085d0d46cf2095193f9a65807876ebd5> (Accessed: 2025-07-11).

(3) Steinmetz, Peter (2020): Scientific Frauds Underlying the False MMR Vaccine-Autism Link. Skeptical Inquirer 06:2020, 30-34.

Quick, Jonathan & Larson, Heidi (2025): The Vaccine-Autism Myth Started 20 Years Ago. Here’s Why It Still Endures Today. Time 02/18/2018. <https://time.com/5175704/andrew-wakefield-vaccine-autism/> (Accessed: 2025-09-11).

(4) Mann, Michael & Hotez, Peter (2025): A Triple Threat to Humanity: Climate Change, Pandemics, and Anti-Science: Skeptical Inquirer 01:2025, 21.

(5) How Anti-Vaxxer’s Logical Fallacies Brought Measles Back, a Fool House Rock. New York Times Opinion YouTube channel 03/11/2019. <https://youtu.be/Z5MjKrqbLGQ?si=J3KQWytjgVc5azl0> (Accessed: 2025-09-11).