Top officials who resigned their positions at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention over the ouster of the agency’s director were escorted out of the building Thursday morning, then celebrated and saluted by CDC staffers in the afternoon.
Before the crowds gathered outside the Atlanta headquarters, some vowed to be the scientists’ and experts’ “loudest advocates.”
Dr. Deb Houry, the chief medical officer; Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, chief of vaccines and respiratory diseases; Dr. Daniel Jernigan, director of the National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases; and data chief Dr. Jennifer Layden had announced their resignations Wednesday. Although they had already been escorted out on Thursday — “by friends,” Houry stressed — staffers still gathered outside the agency’s main office in Atlanta for a tribute called a “clap out.”
“What makes CDC great are the people that make CDC up, the scientists, everyone that makes this a family. And it’s a family that defends our country and the health of our children and the health of adults, whether it’s because of vaccines, whether it’s preventing overdose, chronic disease, stopping Ebola at its source rather than when it came to this continent,” Daskalakis told the crowd. “You are the people that protect America, and America needs to see that you are the people that protect America, and we are going to be your loudest advocates.”
Dr. Daniel Pollock, who retired in 2021 after 37 years at the CDC, called Wednesday’s events “unprecedented.”
