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At This Hour

CDC Considers Travel Ban for Ebola-Care Workers; Stocks Calmer Today; Parents Told to Keep Kids at Home; NYT: CDC Protocols Were "Irresponsible and Dead Wrong"

Aired October 16, 2014 - 11:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


JOHN BERMAN, CNN CO-ANCHOR: Hello there, I'm John Berman.

MICHAELA PEREIRA, CNN CO-ANCHOR: And I'm Michaela Pereira.

We begin with the rush to contain Ebola in the United States. The CDC is now considering banning 76 Texas health-care workers from boarding any commercial aircraft.

This move comes after federal officials in charge of the Ebola response admitted that they knew that a second nurse battling the virus had a low-grade fever and traveled by airplane this week from Cleveland to Dallas, but they didn't stop her.

Nurse Amber Vinson who cared for Thomas Duncan, the man who died of Ebola, is now being treated in Atlanta.

BERMAN: @THISHOUR, the director of the CDC getting ready to face Congress and face new questions about whether his agency was ready for this disease, did enough to get hospitals ready, and is even now handling the situation in the right way.

Earlier today, a nurse at the Dallas hospital that diagnosed the first Ebola case described a facility in turmoil.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BRIANA AGUIRRE, NURSE, TEXAS HEALTH PRESBYTERIAN HOSPITAL: He was put into an area where there are up to seven other patients.

We took probably around three hours to make our first contact with the CDC to even let them know that -- what we had as our suspicion.

You know, there was no special precautions other than what we know in the medical industry, the, you know, basic contact precautions.

We were unprepared in the sense that we did not know what to do with his lab specimens. They were initially mishandled, and that's what the lab technician told me. And it was just a little chaotic scene.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PEREIRA: That nurse, Briana Aguirre, will speak tonight with our own Anderson Cooper, "AC360," (inaudible) Eastern right here on CNN.

She'll also be with us on "NEW DAY" tomorrow morning.

We want to turn to our senior medical correspondent, Elizabeth Cohen, and joining us also, our aviation analyst, Mary Schiavo, former inspector-general of the federal Department of Transportation.

Elizabeth, I want to begin with you, because it's interesting to me that this nurse who had treated -- was part of the critical care team that treated Thomas Duncan who died of Ebola. She self-reported to the CDC that she was planning on traveling and that she had a low-grade fever.

She wanted to check with them. She did the right thing. She wanted to check with them to find out if they were concerned at all. And they gave her the green light to travel. That's concerning to a lot of people.

ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN SENIOR MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Right. Well, actually, let's talk a little bit about how that happened. This nurse was supposed to call in her temperatures twice a day, so the call that she made, I don't know that it was anything special. She was calling her temperature in, which was 99.5.

So, by the book, according to the CDC, a temperature isn't considered a sign of -- a possible sign of Ebola until it reaches 100.4. So this is a great lesson that sometimes you have to go beyond what is written in a guideline. You've got to have a bigger brain than that.

So when you hear 99.5, which is elevated -- it's only one degree below what the threshold is -- plus, they knew she had taken care of Duncan with protective equipment that was found to be problematic, you tell her, stay put.

And the CDC is saying, yeah, we should have told her to stay put.

BERMAN: You're saying, you know, expand maybe to think with a bigger brain, Elizabeth.

The question is, do these 76 health-care workers who came in contact with Thomas Eric Duncan -- should they be flying at all, regardless of what their temperature is during this 21-day period?

And, Mary Schiavo, now there's a discussion how about putting them on a do-not-board list. Explain to me, Mary, exactly what that is and if you support such a move?

MARY SCHIAVO, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: Well, it's similar to a do-not-fly list for security reasons.

But under the Public Health Act, the secretary of Health and Human Services can delegate to the CDC, and they have the power to prevent the entry of disease and to stop the spread of disease, and that includes forbidding people from traveling.

And they are allowed to use the law-enforcement powers of the states and to the extent necessary of the United States, including presidential executive power to make that happen. So, yes, they have the power and, yes, it should be done because common sense has taken a holiday here. We now have travel willy-nilly. No one has control of the situation. If even for a short period of time, they have to do this because they must get control of this spun- out-of-control situation.

PEREIRA: Let's stay on the common-sense thing for a minute, because you make a really good point, Mary.

And, Elizabeth, let's look at this video, an image that I think a lot of people have seen by this point in the day, when that second nurse, the sickened nurse, Amber Vinson was put on a plane, transferred to Emory hospital in Atlanta.

You see the four people in hazmat suits, and then there's that guy, that guy with a clipboard in street clothes, not wearing any sort of protective clothing.

Is it -- is this concerning, Elizabeth? I think to the untrained eye, the optics of it are concerning, when you see four people taking great caution in taking care of a patient who is in the yellow hazmat suit.

COHEN: Right. So optics are not always right. We reached out to Phoenix Air, the folks who were doing the transport. We haven't gotten a hold of them, but they did speak to ABC News.

And they had a very reasonable explanation, which is that the guys in the suits have limited visibility, and so you want someone out there to give them verbal directions, not touch them, but to say, you know, move here or go here or do this.

So, he's a supervisor, according to ABC. And you can see that he's keeping his distance. So I know it might look a little bit funny. But he is -- you know, at that distance, he's not going to -- you know, he's not right near her. He's not in contact with her bodily fluids.

I'm pleased to say that clipboard guy now has his own Twitter handle, so if anyone wants to tweet to him, you can do it.

BERMAN: We've got to remember the science here. I think that gets lost in a lot of this, Elizabeth.

Doctors are in Africa all the time treating people. If you're more than three feet away, the science says that you will be OK, and clipboard guy didn't seem to get within three feet. He seemed to be being careful.

I don't think it was perhaps an oversight. He knew what he was doing.

COHEN: Right. I mean, I was certainly -- when I was in Liberia, I spoke with Ebola patients, ones who were recovering and were well enough to talk

I was way, way more than three feet away, and I actually took a picture of it and tweeted it and got all sorts of responses like, oh, my gosh, are you crazy? But it's not airborne. Their droplets are not going to fly ten feet over to me. I think it's so important to keep the science in mind here.

PEREIRA: Now, last quick question for Mary, a follow-up, are you hearing anything from inside the aviation industry further?

Because, you know, you've said that you support a travel ban to and from West Africa. What are you hearing from your colleagues?

SHIAVO: Well, my colleagues are saying things like we're getting a different story out of the CDC and we aren't really prepared for it.

And I think the biggest thing within the last week was the CDC -- and it's on the CNN website, by the way, is that even dried -- dried fluids -- that the virus can live for several hours.

And if it's wet, like if the seat is wet or the carpeting is wet on the plane, it can live for several days. And a lot of people in the aviation industry said, wait a minute, they never told us that, and we don't have equipment to deal with that. And, by the way, we still have to turn our plane in 30 minutes and get them back out.

So I think there's great frustration with the tremendous disconnects on the information from the government.

PEREIRA: All right, Mary Schiavo, we appreciate it. Elizabeth Cohen, thanks for keeping us honest. We appreciate it, both of you.

BERMAN: Ahead for us @THISHOUR, we're going to stay on the issue of what the actual science here. How worried is too worried? Schools close in Ohio and Texas because of Ebola fears. Is that way over the top? We're going to speak to an infectious disease specialist.

Then, it has been a wild, wild ride on Wall Street. We're going to tell you where the markets are right now after a day that had a lot of people feeling very jittery.

PEREIRA: A little later in the show, though, we're going to take you on a very beautiful and very personal journey through the generations. We're going to meet the matriarch of Christine Romans's family coming up.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

PEREIRA: It's another wild day on Wall Street. Now I think one of our producers described it as a little bit of a yo-yo, markets sinking, rallying, sinking again.

Let's show you the Big Board right now. The Dow is off about 62 points there.

We watched yesterday -- Christine Romans here, first of all, I have to give the proper introduction. Christine Romans, chief business correspondent, joins us.

Yesterday, we saw the Dow plummeting, what, 464 --

CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN CHIEF BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: It was crazy.

PEREIRA: Four hundred and sixty points before the end of the day and rallying then. Not as bad of a day as it was yesterday, but still volatile.

ROMANS: I'm impressed by how it's holding in here. You haven't even matched the day's lows yesterday.

Whoever was the brave soul who was buying stocks when the stock market was down 400 points yesterday is very happy today, because you've got the Dow only down about 60 or 65 points.

So what's going on? Europe is slowing. China is slowing. You've got oil prices falling. You've got bond yields falling. You've got stocks falling. You've got all these -- the dollar strong -- all these big major moves telling us we're at this moment here in the markets.

That moment is the Fed getting out of the stimulus business. That moment is the rest of the world slowing while the U.S. is actually showing some signs of strength. I saw a really good jobless claims number today, 14-year low for the number of people lining up for first-time jobless benefits. That's a good thing.

Yet, we're talking about the rest of the world. We're talking about uncertainly.

BERMAN: Europe is screwed up, and we can't do anything about it. I think it's a feeling of powerlessness.

Look, a lot of people were watching the markets go up and down yesterday, and they were hearing the Ebola news. And there was this question, oh, my gosh, are the markets freaked because of Ebola?

The markets don't need to be scared of Ebola. There's plenty else to be worried about.

ROMANS: There's plenty of predictable reasons for the stock market to be falling. One of those is that it's been up for a thousand days without a ten percent correction, a pullback of ten percent, perfectly healthy, perfectly normal.

You usually have a couple of them in every 12 or 18 months. We haven't had one. We just haven't had one.

So there are a lot of reasons to take money off the table if you don't think it's the best-case scenario for the U.S. economy and global economy, quite frankly. So that's one good reason.

You throw in Ebola and the idea of somebody actually with symptoms on a commercial air flight, you can see why traders got out of hand with that maybe yesterday morning.

But that's something, the Ebola concerns, about an outbreak in the U.S. There is no outbreak in the U.S. You've got -- those concerns that stay in the travel industry for now. They stay in the travel industry.

Even yesterday airline stocks managed to mostly recover.

BERMAN: Christine Romans, we're going to see you in a little bit. We're very excited about that.

PEREIRA: Are you going to tell us the story?

ROMANS: I am.

(CROSSTALK)

BERMAN: We're going to find out way more about you than you ever imagined.

PEREIRA: Hey, listen, you should go easy because your story is coming up, OK?

ROMANS: I am not Canadian. That's all I can tell you.

BERMAN: Talking about unfounded fears, on the subject of unfounded fears, we have schools closed now in Ohio and Texas because they are concerned about Ebola.

How far is too far? We're going to talk to a specialist here who actually knows some of these answers. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

PEREIRA: So parents received a quite alarming message from a few schools near Cleveland and Dallas last night. They were told to keep their kids home. Two schools near Cleveland are closed in order to be disinfected. Officials there learned that a staff member may have been on the same Frontier Airlines plane as Ebola patient Amber Vinson, although not the same flight. Meanwhile, several schools near Dallas were closed after officials learned that two students were on that same flight as Vinson.

BERMAN: The Texas nurse had flown from Cleveland to Dallas a day before her diagnosis. We want to talk about this.

Joining us, Dr. Amesh Adalja from the Infectious Disease Society of America. And Dr. Adalja, look, I think we all understand why people are concerned. Everyone is concerned. We want the right decisions to be made and this to be handled in the right way. But concern does not change the science of this virus. Is closing these schools based on science?

DR. AMESH ADALJA, INFECTIOUS DISEASE SOCIETY OF AMERICA: You're exactly right. The science hasn't changed. There definitely are legitimate concerns and questions that people have. But we still know how this virus spreads, exclusively blood and body fluids from infected individuals who are symptomatic. It's not spread through casual contact, it's not the flu, it's not the common cold. It's still a very -- it's a very deadly disease, a scary disease, but not a very contagious disease. PEREIRA: That's a really important thing to highlight. Now, we know

the director of the CDC, Tom Frieden, admitted that Vinson should never have gotten on that flight when she let them know that she had had a slight fever. We also know that there were kids from the school, a staff member from a different school, were on board that plane, some of them were aboard that flight. And there were all those other passengers.

Give me a reality check, Dr. Adalja. Is there a chance that they could have been sickened by Amber Vinson? Let's put this to rest.

ADALJA: I would really be surprised if she actually spread the disease during her travel. Though she had a low-grade temperature, she wasn't exhibiting the symptoms, such as vomiting or diarrhea on that airplane, which are how Ebola spreads from person to person. You have to emanate or, you know, discharge body fluid somehow in order to get from one person to another. And the other point is, this doesn't go very far. It's not an airborne virus. So, it's really literally only having those body fluids -- direct contact with those body fluids. It's not like measles where you can be sitting on one side of the plane and someone is on the other side and you can transmit the virus. You really have to be within three feet of contact with that person and they have to emanate body fluids. It's not a casually transmitted virus. I think that's the bottom line that people have to remember.

BERMAN: Now we hear the New York Giants say they're a little bit nervous, some of the players are nervous about going to play the Cowboys in Dallas. Here's my concern, Dr. Adalja, is when you see this fear about the wrong things, the things that are not based in fact. It diverts focus from those things that we need to focus on, like the protocols, like the health of the people who have been infected. You're involved in public health, obviously, you know, do you have that concern?

ADALJA: Definitely. All of this can be a distraction. It's great that the public is aware of this infectious disease outbreak, that they're thinking about it, trying to learn about it. But we don't want them to be so panicked in causing these Ebola scares that actually divert health care resources to managing them.

You know, when someone sneezes on an airplane, for example, and says they have Ebola and that creates a big scare, that takes away from the response that the CDC is doing on other events that are really important, such as, like you said, educating health care workers, making sure our hospitals are ready to identify Ebola patients, so we don't have a repeat of these events that happened in Dallas. Because this outbreak is still raging on.

PEREIRA: We appreciate you helping us cut through the noise, Dr. Adalja. You reminded us on our air previously that the flu, the common flu, kills thousands of people in the United States every year. That is more concerning than Ebola. As frightening as it is, this is a deadly disease, but we have to keep things in perspective.

BERMAN: I wonder if those schools that closed have the kids wash their hands on a regular basis, because that can keep them healthy. PEREIRA: Let's not even get started on that.

BERMAN: 21 minutes after the hour right now. Ahead for us, we're going to go to the frontlines of where there actually is an Ebola outbreak. We're going to speak to a man who has some very harsh words for the CDC, words like wrong and irresponsible. Why did officials at the agency ignore this expert's warnings about their protocols?

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BERMAN: @THISHOUR, the head of the CDC preparing to tell Congress why the agency, the mission of which is to work 24-7 to protect America from health and safety and security threats, both foreign and in the U.S., why that agency has struggled to find clarity in the way it has handled Ebola here in the United States.

PEREIRA: The very man in charge of infection control at Emory Hospital where two Americans were treated, and we should point out, without exposing the staff to the virus, describe the CDC guidelines that were in place before this week here in "The New York Times," look at it. Absolutely irresponsible and dead wrong.

The man that wrote those words said those words, Sean Kaufman, joins us, by phone, from the real frontline against the disease. He joins us by phone from Liberia. Sean, really, really great to have you. And I know you're probably getting a lot of questions about this article and your quote in "The New York Times," absolutely dead wrong and irresponsible. To you, what was the most egregious part of the guidelines?

SEAN KAUFMAN, MEDICAL CHARITY TRAINER: Well I think when you compare Ebola being worked at in a clinical setting with the Ebola being worked at in a laboratory setting, you really have a very big difference. You know, in the laboratory at the CDC, they will spend millions of dollars on engineering controls and they will spend thousands of dollars on personal protective equipment for scientists to work with very small quantities of Ebola. And when you start making recommendations for minimal protection with patients that could produce high quantities of fluids at unpredictable times, you're really putting your doctors and your nurses at risk. And when you look at the poster closely, you can clearly see that even the order for removing and putting on the PTE is actually questionable, as well.

BERMAN: Doctor, you know, I understand you warned the CDC, you told them of your concerns, and I also understand that perhaps you didn't get the response you expected.

KAUFMAN: I was really hoping that the response that I would have received was, let's take a closer look at it. And I'll be honest with you, maybe in words that wasn't the case, but it's clearly evident that CDC is changing, and I think that's a positive side. I think that with this outbreak we're going to learn so much, and one of the things that we're seeing is that CDC is adapting. And I think that the good thing about this attention is that CDC will get it right. I have no faith that they won't. PEREIRA: You know, I want to talk to you about where you are right now

in Liberia. We know The World Health Organization said today that it could take months before the Ebola outbreak can be stopped there and are looking at what they're calling the increasing number of Ebola cases and deaths on the persistent transmission of the virus, increase in new cases in New Guinea, difficulties in gathering data in Liberia. Give us a sense of how things are going on the ground from your perspective, Sean?

KAUFMAN: Well I think with any infectious disease outbreak we have three things that we really have to worry about. No. 1 is denying that it even exists. And I think that there are still folks in the remote parts of Liberia that are denying that Ebola even exists. And I think that the second thing is fear, what happens if I do get sick? Ebola is a very, very scary infectious disease. So folks are very afraid of it. And you're seeing that in the United States, you're seeing that here in Africa.

And I think last, but not least, one of the greatest challenges that we face is stigma. And that means when someone gets sick, do they want to present? Because if they present, they may be mistreated, and so that's why it's very, very important that we look at folks who do present with signs and symptoms as, you know, indicators of being a hero. What I mean by that is, they're taking responsibility and letting others know around them that I am a potential risk, and therefore, I'm not putting you at risk.

So, you know, when we see folks that show up at a hospital, they've been in Liberia, they do have a fever, and the nurse says, well, I think you should go ahead and go home, they should fight. They should make the stand and say no, I would be a risk at home. And the same goes with a person who may board an airplane who has worked around an Ebola patient, she's running a fever, or he's running a fever. And the reality is this, if you know you're working around this very dangerous bug, take responsibility and protect those socially. It's a message we're teaching here in Africa and it's a message that needs to be heard back home in the U.S., as well.

BERMAN: It does need to be heard here, for sure. I want to talk to you about your experience with Emory, because clearly, Emory and this facility in Nebraska, they've been doing something right. And at Texas Health Presbyterian, something went wrong. So what's the difference?

KAUFMAN: Well, I can't speak to what happened at Texas, but I will tell you at Emory, it started with a phenomenal group of staff. The nurses and doctors and their commitment and their compassion that they dedicated themselves to was outstanding, it's one of the best things I've ever witnessed in my life. I think the facility was engineered properly. We had a beautiful state-of-the-art facility, and the greatest thing, this is what I truly believe the greatest thing, because I think the greatest risk for working with a patient with Ebola is the culture of safety. And Emory University allowed the nurses to not only speak up about their worries and their concerns, but they listened to them. And as a result, the patients got the best care. And I think that is

so desperately need. You've got to look at culture of the organization, you've got to look at the workforce readiness, and Emory was very ready. You've got to look at the patient's stability, because that determines risk, as well, is the patient stable or not? And last, but not least, you look at the virus, which happens to be, to be honest with you, the lowest risk in all.

PEREIRA: Sean Kaufman, you've made yourself so available to us here @THISHOUR, we appreciate it. We hope to stay in communication with you in the coming days and weeks. Okay, Sean? And you take care of yourself.

KAUFMAN: Yes, thanks. Thank you, Michaela. Thank you, John. You guys take care.

PEREIRA: Alright, ahead @THISHOUR, CDC Chief Dr. Tom Frieden is going to be due on Capitol Hill in less than an hour. He would likely defend his agency's handling of Ebola. Some in Congress though are calling for him to step down. We'll get our political panel to weigh in next.

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