Tag: CDC

Early Monday morning, a couple who traveled on the MV Hondius—the cruise ship with a rare and deadly hantavirus outbreak—were wheeled into Emory University Hospital’s Serious Communicable Diseases Unit. They wore full protective gear, including hoods and gowns, as did the health care workers who greeted them. Television helicopters hovered overhead, tracking their movements, from their climb down the steps of the charter plane to their arrival in ambulances at their temporary medical home. But the concern turned out to be a false alarm—at least for now.

In this era of the HIV epidemic, talking saves lives. It pierces stigma and turns ordinary conversation into something lifesaving. Daniel Driffin, an Atlanta-based HIV activist and project manager with the international nonprofit the HIV Vaccine Trials Network, talks a lot. Armed with a PhD in public heath, he speaks on expert advisory panels and directly to people with HIV—both online and in person. In 2025, ongoing dialogue became more critical than ever.

On a November night inside a Decatur event venue, the crowd included politicians and hopeful candidates—but that evening, the stage belonged to a group of people who’d never planned to be political at all. In between sets of acoustic music about “making good trouble” and “finding our better angels,” supporters listened as former CDC workers—some wearing masquerade-style masks to protect their identities—shared their stories of finding a deep sense of purpose in their work at CDC, only to be abruptly fired en masse in April. After years of working in suicide prevention, tribal health, and other specialties, these workers now found renewed purpose in a field that they’d meticulously avoided in their former roles: politics.

Y’all know ATL’s just gonna ATL sometimes. Here are a few of our favorite things that happened here this year—and couldn’t have happened anywhere else.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is ground zero in a battle over the size and scope of the federal government—and Atlanta is poised to feel the collateral damage.

The sun hadn’t yet come up when Charles’s phone started ringing on the morning of April 1. A colleague at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention told him employees were receiving reduction in force (RIF) notices as they arrived to work at the Clifton Road campus. Charles found one waiting in his inbox, too. That morning, 2,400 CDC employees were given RIF notices with no explanation of which positions were being eliminated or why.

At first, the crowd that gathered Thursday afternoon across the street from the sprawling Clifton Road campus of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had the feel of a reunion. Retirees hugged former colleagues, fired workers returned, even some current employees melded in among them—although the announcement on a loud speaker warning “If you’re an employee and have your badge on, please take it off!” made it crystal clear that for all the conviviality, this event had more serious undertones.

Alicia Tucker suffers from alpha-gal syndrome (AGS), a type of allergy that is passed to humans via a single, tiny vector: the Lone Star tick. In a 2023 press release, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated that up to 450,000 Americans suffer from AGS, calling it “an important emerging public health problem.”

When Atlanta-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention set out to tackle the pandemic, it was all hands on deck.

Georgia law hasn’t caught up to science. For people living here with HIV, consensual sex can still lead to felony charges. An Atlanta writer shares his concerns and why it's time for change.