'RFK Jr is a disaster': Staff describe chaos in 'anti-science' regime

For the workers of Building 21, keeping a low profile is considered the best way to survive.

Zoom meetings are avoided out of fear they are being secretly recorded. Conversations about budgets and policies are held in soundproof offices, as if they were matters of national security. Many employees carry small notebooks with them, jotting down notes instead of logging them on a computer. The desks of several sacked colleagues are empty — save for the few who have left family photos and possessions behind in case a judge rules they can return.

It sounds like a scene out of Nineteen Eighty-four — yet this is the headquarters of the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta, Georgia. Here, staff do everything they can to avoid the twentysomething officials from the Department of Government Efficiency (Doge) who stalk the building’s corridors, said a global health specialist at Building 21, who asked that his name not be used.


“There is a constant sense that we’re being watched and monitored,” the source said. “Doge leadership are located several floors above but they have this omnipotent presence … We’re counted when we swipe our badges into the building.”

https://www.thetimes.com/us/american-politics/article/cdc-rfk-robert-f-kennedy-q5tv0300z