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CDC Chief Grilled On Ebola Mistakes; Top General Worries If Ebola Can Go Airborne; Kors, Halle Berry Work To End World Hunger

Aired October 16, 2014 - 15:30   ET

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

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN ANCHOR: Bottom of the hour. You're watching CNN. I'm Brooke Baldwin. Today we watched the chief of the CDC, Dr. Tom Frieden, the man, who's really become the face of this response to Ebola here in the U.S., really grilled today on Capitol Hill testifying before members of Congress amid some calls for him to resign.

Listen, he was grilled about everything from the CDC, green lighting, this nurse's commercial air flight one day before she was diagnosed with Ebola to questions about inadequate personal protective equipment in some of these hospitals.

So let me bring in Dr. Kenneth Bernard, service special assistant to President George W. Bush on biodefense from 2002 to 2005 and under Clinton '98 to 2000. So you have dealt with anthrax, SARS and AIDS.

You know what you're talking about. I want to get to all that in a minute. But first just on Dr. Frieden, I was reading you were quoted in "The Times" this morning and it really jumped out so I wanted to talk to you. You said Dr. Frieden's job is like being on a battlefield. What do you mean by that?

DR. KENNETH BERNARD, FORMER SPECIAL ASSISTANT TO PRESIDENT G.W. BUSH FOR BIODEFENSE: This security and health are now intertwined in the 21st Century. We saw it with AIDS and anthrax certainly and now we are seeing it again with Ebola. Our security as a nation, our family security, our community's security, our international security is all tightly intertwined now.

I think that what I've seen in those years starting with HIV and going through SARS and anthrax and now is that there's no turning back. It's a battlefield. We are every day battling infectious diseases of one kind or another and every now and then they pop up their ugly little heads and really impact us in a big way.

BALDWIN: I remember SARS and the fears of the masks and could I get it and how does that happen? And of course, AIDS, you think of AIDS and anthrax, all of those the notion, the "h" word, hysteria, hysteria. What did you learn from that that this administration should bring to the table?

BERNARD: Public health isn't just about being right. It's being right and also having the faith in people that you're serving. I think that you'll notice Tony Fauci is often on television. He's a master the explaining complicated issues to the general public.

Tom is pretty good at it too, Frieden at CDC. It's a skill. Public health isn't just finding sick people, treating them, isolating them. It's also communicating with the public. That can be even the biggest job.

BALDWIN: You know, this is something I think a lot of people don't realize because it's very easy to do like this to the CDC. Listen, I'm not saying the CDC has been awesome through this whole thing whatsoever.

But what people don't realize is the CDC, they are not this agency that mandates protocol and guidelines, they have to recommend them. They aren't even allowed to say, I'm going to Texas to fix this. Texas has to invite them. It's not entirely what people think.

BERNARD: No, it isn't. CDC provides the proper guidelines and those guidelines change over time as we get experience.

BALDWIN: Just recently changing, evolving.

BERNARD: There were only been 2,500 Ebola cases diagnosed up until this outbreak. We didn't have a lot of information on Ebola except for what came out in laboratories and in those individual outbreaks in the last 25 years. So it's a tough job dealing with a new outbreak.

Even if you know what the disease is and you know what the virus is, how it acts in a big population is completely different and we learn new things all the time and the whole idea is to be nimble, learn new things, and adapt your recommendations.

Tom Frieden doesn't have the opportunity to sit back and say, well, let's wait two weeks and see how it goes then we'll have the information we need. He has to make recommendations today with what we know today and if he has to change them tomorrow, he has to change them.

BALDWIN: Here's the question, I was talking to Anderson Cooper in Dallas. Anderson is getting this question. I'm getting this question from people. I'm no doctor. I'm not in on super-secret information from the CDC and people coming to me and they say, should I really be worried, Brooke?

I think that you're the kind of person I could ask that question of. Just given your previous experience and what we now know. This is unthinkable scenario that Ebola has reached our shores and now you have multiple people, who have contracted it. What's going to happen?

BERNARD: If the virus doesn't mutate and I have no expectation that it's going to mutate into something that's more spreadable, I think that we're going to get on top of this. I think there could be a few more cases. There could be several cases. There could be maybe 10 or 20. I don't know.

But I don't think this is going to be an outbreak that we have to be afraid of. Remember when you make public health recommendations like they did when they closed schools or they --

BALDWIN: They have now in Texas and Ohio, by the way.

BERNARD: Exactly. That has huge impacts. That means all those parents have to stay home. They can't go to work because they have to stay home with a kid that would otherwise be in school. Public health recommendations like this have huge impacts that spread through society.

I think in this case this is not a terribly communicable disease unless you're caring for a patient or you have close physical contact. Remember, none of the other contacts of the African who died have come down with it yet.

BALDWIN: Thank goodness. Dr. Kenneth Bernard, what a pleasure. We got lucky having you sit next to me. I really appreciated your perspective. Thank you.

Coming up next, we talk a lot about this hospital here in Dallas receiving a lot of criticism for the response to these multiple Ebola cases. They now are speaking out. They are responding.

Just into us here at CNN, I have a statement for you from Texas Health Presbyterian in Dallas and in it talks about its care and also explains why both nurses with Ebola were transferred out of Dallas to other hospitals. That's next.

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BALDWIN: As we've been reporting, the second Ebola stricken nurse has been flown out of Dallas to the NIH, National Institutes of Health. That is in Maryland. One of only four hospitals in this country certified to treat Ebola patients.

We are also getting the statement now from the hospital in Dallas that has been treating Nurse Nina Pham. Senior medical correspondent, Elizabeth Cohen, is there outside of Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital. Elizabeth, what are they saying?

ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN SENIOR MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: All right, Brooke, I want to read you a part of this statement from Presbyterian. "We believe that transferring Nina to NIH is the right decision.

With many of the medical professionals who would normally staff the Intensive Care Unit sidelined for continuous monitoring, it is in the best interest of this hospital employees, nurses, physician and the community to give the hospital an opportunity to prepare for whatever comes next."

So basically what they're saying is, look, we have dozens of employees, who are at home, they can't come in because they helped take care of Mr. Duncan and we need to prepare for whatever comes next. Now what I kind of read there is, there could be a third employee, who comes in with an Ebola infection and we need to get ready for that person. BALDWIN: Wow. All right, so the possibility of a third. What about this notion we're hearing from a CDC official, Elizabeth, who spent two weeks at this hospital. The word he used is scared. People are scared to come to the hospital. We know not even half the beds are full right now. Tell me more about that.

COHEN: Right. So I was speaking with a CDC doctor, who spent two days this week inside the hospital, you know, constantly with the doctors and the nurses and talking to them and helping them improve their systems.

And he said, look, this hospital has 900 beds and 300 of them are full because people are scared to come here. That's not a great situation for a hospital, one-third of your beds full. That's really financially problematic.

So my guess is that this hospital is -- it behooves them in a way to get Ebola patients out of the hospital. They want to start getting back to normal as soon as they can.

BALDWIN: Just reading about this hospital sounds like an excellent hospital in Dallas and talking to a lot of doctors and I know you have as well, this could have been anywhere. This could have been anywhere. Elizabeth Cohen, thank you very much.

Just ahead, one of President Obama's top military advisers told CNN he's worried about Ebola going airborne. Talk to a lot of doctors and they say that's the very highly improbable. So how does the White House feel about that remark? We'll talk to Jake Tapper about that.

Plus, I'll talk to Halle Berry. You heard me right, about the possible food shortage from this Ebola outbreak in Africa. That's coming up.

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BALDWIN: If there's one thing we know about Ebola, it is not airborne. That's a direct quote from the president of the United States, but President Obama's top military adviser is apparently not so convinced.

General Martin Dempsey refusing to rule out the possibility that one day he may have to fight Ebola in a much more aggressive form. I want you to hear what he told Kyra Phillips.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GENERAL MARTIN DEMPSEY, CHAIRMAN, JOINT CHIEFS OF STAFF: Because we know so little about it. You will hear different people describe whether it could become airborne. I mean, if you bring two doctors who happen to have that specialty into a room and one will say, no, there is no way it will never become airborne, but it could mutate so it would be harder to discover.

It actually disguises itself in the body, which is what makes it so dangerous and has that incubation period of about 21 days. Another doctor will say, well, if it continues to mutate at the rate it's mutating.

And if we go from 20,000 infected to 100,000, the population might allow it the opportunity to mutate and become airborne and then it will be extraordinarily serious problem. I don't know who is right. I don't want to take that chance.

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BALDWIN: All right, Jake Tapper, let me bring you in, our chief Washington correspondent, host of "THE LEAD." Listen, we just heard from General Dempsey and then you have what the president said and by the way, what multiple doctors have said that it's brutally impossible. So what's happening here?

JAKE TAPPER, CNN CHIEF WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT: Well, it's somebody, who is not a public health official, giving a thought on a major public health issue. General Martin Dempsey, of course, is a decorated veteran and not somebody whose honor one would impugn.

But I think if you were to get truth serum into someone at the White House, they would say something along the lines of we defer to our public health officials when it comes to whether or not Ebola is airborne, although you are not going to hear anybody criticize General Dempsey, of course, he's being the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

BALDWIN: Let me know when you find that truth serum by the way, Tapper. We did have a columnist on yesterday that wrote this piece in "The L.A. Times" a couple days ago talking about if it's not CDC, who really, technically is in charge, it should be the surgeon general and he points specifically to the NRA for the reason why this individual, this doctor has not been green lighted.

TAPPER: Well, it's certainly true that the NRA has opposed the confirmation of the Dr. Vivik Murthy, who the president nominated to be surgeon general. The White House was asked about this yesterday and the basic answer is having a confirmed surgeon general couldn't hurt.

But they are not out there making the argument that the surgeon general, a confirmed surgeon general, would be making a difference in what's going on right now in terms of the battle against Ebola.

First of all, there is an acting surgeon general. Second of all, the person who is designated to be running the response right now is the president's adviser, Lisa Monaco.

So they're not making that argument although I have heard people say Republicans should allow the confirmation that would change everything. That's not an argument the White House is making.

BALDWIN: I have heard that multiple times as well. Jake Tapper, we'll see you in 10 minutes. Thank you, my friend, hosting "THE LEAD."

Coming up next, Ebola could be having an impact on the food supply? It is a cause Halle Berry is speaking out about. I talked to her about that.

And a new partnership with fashion mogul and guru, Michael Kors to help feed the hungry around the world and by the way, there's a back story to this selfie, one selfie equals 100 meals. We'll explain how you can help coming up.

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BALDWIN: Fighting back, the World Food Program is sending emergency supplies to nearly 1.3 million people in West Africa. I talked to two advocates lending their fame as World Food Day today is brought into greater focus.

Fashion designer, Michael Kors, and actress, Halle Berry, have been providing meals for kids all around the world. Take a listen.

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BALDWIN: Thank you so much for coming in. We appreciate it. Before we get into the selfies, let me just ask, just hearing in terms of the World Food Program, people are concerned about West Africa because of everything happening there, in terms of the rural areas, the remote villages, the farming issues.

They say they need to reach 1.3 million people and so far they have only been able to provide food for several hundred thousand and you all are so dedicated to this issue. How much does that concern you?

MICHAEL KORS, FASHION DESIGNER: It's a huge concern, but I have to say World Food Program, they are on the ground. They are everywhere. They are acclimated to areas like West Africa, Syria, you know, places where you have such catastrophic situations.

So are they managing to get everything out there, but we know that they are there and they have the infrastructure. So I think that if anyone is going to do it, they are going to do it.

BALDWIN: Tell me about Nicaragua. You went down in July?

HALLE BERRY, ACTRESS: Yes.

BALDWIN: How was it?

BERRY: It was probably one of the most amazing experiences of my life. When I got involved with Michael about a year and a half ago, one of the most important things for me was to go see with my own two eyes and use my own two hands help the way I could.

And you must do that in order to get a feeling and I brought this feeling home with me and it was staggering to see how beautiful the country is, but how depressed the people are and how in need the people are and that's what was shocking for me.

And I also took my daughter on this trip. She's 6. She got to see these kids and I didn't say one word to her. I was going to let her experience and feel it, and it was -- it changed her life as well. BALDWIN: What did she say?

BERRY: Well, when we were there, she was very quiet. She saw that these kids were different, the reality was different, she was helping to serve the food and she thought the rice looked pretty good. Can I have some?

She was inspired by how good the food was, but also worried that this was all that they got, that this was the one meal they got a day. So now when I go home to her and say, you're really not done with the chicken fingers? There are kids that don't have food.

BALDWIN: Why do you care so much about this?

KORS: Well, I have to say, some people, when you're in fashion you can say, I'm not a politician. I'm not a scientist. I'm not a doctor, but what can I do? Hopefully what I do is make people feel a little better about themselves, about a spring in their walk.

And I believe that you can change lives quickly and I love anything where you see results. And the simple truth is, you know, the hunger issue, we have the food. The food is there. There's more than enough food to feed the hungry.

BALDWIN: So that's the issue?

KORS: The issue is getting the food to the people who need it and we've seen what's happened now in the past few years. It's pretty remarkable the needle's moving quickly. We went from one in eight to one in nine. Now, one in nine is still too many as far as people going to bed hungry at night around the world. But that's a move on the needle.

BALDWIN: Talk to me about these t-shirts and what people can do who are watching.

KORS: Well, here we are. Well, what I decided was, OK, go into one of my stores, get the t-shirt, take a fabulous picture of yourself or have a friend post it. Take it and when I see that, for every selfie, I'll donate $100.

BALDWIN: How do you get people to care about what is happening that seems like a half a world away?

BERRY: Well, I think this is a good way. This is a very ingenious idea because it helps people to do what we are all into doing today, taking pictures of ourselves. I'm not personally.

KORS: Be neither.

BERRY: But it's about saying, use that which we are all into doing today and find a way to do good for that. My daughter did a lemonade stand when she came home and she raised $300 to send to the World Food Program. In four hours on our street she raised --

BALDWIN: A little lemonade goes a long way. KORS: One cup of coffee, think about this, that's meals for a month. How about that?

BALDWIN: Because --

KORS: The $5 turns into 30 meals, pretty amazing. Everyone can get involved.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BALDWIN: So, of course, they gave me one of these t-shirts, which I threw on and made sure I got my selfie and you can do this as well. It's called "Selfless Selfie" and it's selfless because you're being selfless in helping people all around the world, who need this food.

Again Michael Kors, Michael, putting your money where your mouth is, really meals here, this picture wraps up 100 meals and yours can, too, 100 meals for people who need it all around the world. Make sure you #watchhungerstop.

Quick check of the Dow here before I let you go. It's been a roller coaster week. It's pretty flat right now before the bell rings. Just down about 40 points. Go to cnnmoney.com for a quick check of that.

I'm Brooke Baldwin. See you back here tomorrow. In the meantime, "THE LEAD" with Jake Tapper starts now.