Not long after the shooting at the Centers for Disease Control on August 8th,

Lauren Weber traveled there to talk to workers.

Even just standing on the street corner, you could see the bullet holes in a federal building,

which is just a really striking visual.

Lauren is a health and science accountability reporter at the Washington Post.

She'd just been to CDC headquarters in June, but after the shooting, the scene was strikingly different.

In front of the bullets-scarred building, there was a makeshift memorial to David

Rose, the police officer who'd been killed. There were all these heartfelt messages written on it.

I counted by Monday, 60-something flowers left for him, and just some heartbreaking messages for

his wife, his two children, his wife is pregnant with a third child on the way.

You know, just heartbreaking messages from CDC employees thanking him for keeping them safe for

his sacrifice. And many folks I spoke to were crying. I mean, they were devastated that this

had happened and they were also starting to become angry.

Angry at the Trump administration's response to the shooting, angry at the distrust of public health,

and angry at the people who'd created that climate.

You know, I think it's important for people to remember that

this, this is happening after the coronavirus pandemic. And during the COVID pandemic, public health

officials, both at the federal, state and local level, were vilified. Armed protesters would show up

at public health meetings, even public health officials' homes.

This has been a long-running fear for folks that work at the CDC, that work in public health,

that this anger from the pandemic would spill over into violence. And, you know, this was kind of

the culmination of those worries when a shooter, Patrick White, showed up to the CDC on August 8th and fired all these bullets at them.

...