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At This Hour

Ohio Public Health Officials Hold a Press Conference; John Berman Discovers His Roots

Aired October 17, 2014 - 11:30   ET

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


(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Outrage from a nurse at the Texas hospital where Ebola patient Thomas Eric Duncan and two infected nurses were treated. She says those nurses are being indirectly blamed for being infected. Listen to this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BRIANA AGUIRRE, NURSE, TEXAS HEALTH PRESBYTERIAN HOSPITAL: I am so tired of hearing their explanations that don't mean anything to anyone. I'm tired of them blaming the nurses for being sick. I'm tired of it. I'm tired of it and I'm not taking it. Those nurses are heroes and I refuse to continue to hear them in any other light, and I'm not going to.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MICHAELA PEREIRA, CNN ANCHOR: Real frustration and real emotion. They are heroes. Those women chose their professions and they also were there trying to care for Thomas Duncan who ultimately died from Ebola.

I want to turn now to this press conference. We're waiting for from public health officials in Akron, Ohio. We know that a dozen people came into contact with one of those nurses, Amber Vinson. Those people now are under quarantine for observation to make sure they don't develop symptoms.

BERMAN: Vinson, as we've been saying, is one of the Texas nurses who treated Thomas Eric Duncan, the Liberian man who died from Ebola, in Dallas. She flew from Dallas to Cleveland a week ago today then back on Monday. Now, Frontier Airlines is contacting as many as 800 passengers linked to those flights in those planes.

PEREIRA: I want to turn to our senior medical correspondent, Elizabeth Cohen.

It's interesting, while we wait for this press conference we're considering these 12 contacts. We've learned about this contract tracing that health officials are doing, these 12 people. Remind us because I think we've gotten -- we have to get back to the science, Elizabeth. Remind us about how long it would be before these people if they were sick how soon they would show those symptoms. DR. ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN SENIOR MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: You know, on

average it's about eight to 10 days between getting exposed to Ebola to actually becoming ill. On average, eight to 10 days. But it can be as long as 21 days and so that's why, when they quarantine people, they quarantine them for 21 days because it could be as long as 21 days.

BERMAN: Elizabeth, the news we learned overnight was that Amber Vinson was feeling achy. There are some reports that she was feeling sick. Before we were told she had a fever of 99.5 when she got on that plane, wasn't systematic until she got back to Dallas, but now there are reports that while she was in Ohio she was achy and really didn't feel great. Those are symptoms of Ebola. But are those symptoms that are contagious?

COHEN: Right. See, this is a really tough point right here. So when someone has Ebola and they're really, really sick, they're throwing up, they have terrible diarrhea, boy, are they contagious if someone were to have contact with them. But at the very beginning of Ebola, where you don't a lot of virus in your system, you could be contagious but you might not be. At the very beginning, you probably don't have enough to get people sick. Let's say, for the first day or so, you might not be able to get people sick. It's only as the disease progresses that you could get people sick. So what we can't answer is how sick was she? Well, she was in Ohio. Could she have infected people? We don't know. I was told she did not have vomiting and diarrhea. That's a positive sign.

BERMAN: That would make it much, much, much more difficult or beyond what we know in the science of Ebola for her to transmit the disease, though I understand why there is still concern.

Elizabeth, stand by, we are waiting to hear from Ohio health officials about Amber Vinson. We'll have a live news conference any minute from now.

We'll continue to talk about the passengers from the flight she was on, what they're being told right now.

Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BERMAN: We're going to take you straight to Ohio right now, a news conference from medical leaders about the nurse who was in Ohio briefly while infected with Ebola. Listen.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The risk factors associated with the nurse who came from Texas. We'll go over where we are with everything. First, we will hear from Dr. Margo Erme, then we'll hear from Dr. Mary Di Oreo from the Ohio Department of Health, and finally we will hear from Dr. Braden from the Centers for Disease Control.

So Dr. Erme?

DR. MARGO ERME, SUMMIT COUNTY PUBLIC HEALTH, OHIO: They told me I was too short yesterday. Now I'm too tall. Geez. OK. Really want to hear me, you don't want to see me.

OK I'll give you an update for October 17. First of all, we have no cases of Ebola virus disease in the county.

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Can you speak up?

ERME: We have no cases of Ebola disease in the county. I want to make that very clear. No cases in Summit County.

Second, we currently have 12 people that we are monitoring, contacts that we are monitoring. The family and the contacts have been very cooperative with us. We have people that are out at their homes daily to check about symptoms, see what their needs are, take their temperatures.

We are currently also talking to people who have called in from the bridal shop after we put on the media yesterday that we wanted to speak to them and we do not have a number yet of how many. The calls are still coming in and the people are still being talked to. And then we will also be working with the Ohio Department of Health and the CDC looking at people who are on the flight October 10 and October 13 to determine their risk status and what type of monitoring they need to do.

At this time, there is no need in Summit County to cancel schools or any events. Again, we have no Ebola virus disease in Summit County. People who are contacts, by definition, do not have any disease. People can be exposed but not be infected. And with Ebola, people are not infectious until they develop symptoms.

Again, you look at the family and the community contacts of the first patient, the gentleman in Dallas and as of today, none have developed symptoms. And I think we are day 18 or 19 out of a 21-day incubation period that we look at.

So I think people need to look at the community risk and health care risk so we are working very closely with our hospitals, with schools, with health care providers and with the number of people who call into our call center to answer questions to get out accurate information at the time that we know it. We are up front that the information will change as we get new knowledge, and while that is unsettling to people, it is actually, as I said, very good because information should be used to further the process and make it better.

So to end up, no Ebola disease in summit county. Contacts are not infectious or a risk to people who come in contact with them. There's no need to cancel events or schools and we are monitoring the process minute by minute, actually.

I'm going to turn it over to Dr. Di Oreo from the state to give perspective on that regard.

PEREIRA: All right, we want to bring in Dr. Lawrence Gostin and our Elizabeth Cohen.

We've just heard from Dr. Erme from the Summit County Public Health Department. It's great to hear her say, quote, "We have no cases of Ebola in Summit County."

Dr. Gostin, it's good to have you with us here. And I think that's the headline people need to hear. They are monitoring some dozen people but, again, the message she wants to spread is that people can be exposed but not infected.

DR. LAWRENCE GOSTIN, PROFESSOR OF GLOBAL HEALTH, GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY: That's exactly right. I mean, we really have to have a kind of a calm, measured response to this. We need to be very vigilant and I think it's really a good thing for us to trace all of those contacts, nowhere they are and have active monitoring of those symptoms. But until they are symptomatic and known to have Ebola virus disease people are not at risk, we don't want to overreact by closing schools and shutting things down. Ebola shouldn't take over our lives. We should deal with this as a vigilant public health issue in which we should be able to handle and handle well. There were missteps in Dallas and I think we've learned our lesson. At least I certainly hope so.

BERMAN: Elizabeth Cohen, it's a pretty expansive list, though, 800 passengers, these 12 people already being monitored, and now these people at the bridal shop.

COHEN: Right, this is a lot of people so what in Dallas we've seen the CDC folks pitch in this isn't intellectually difficult work, but it takes boots on the ground, to borrow a military phrase, to keep track of how these people are doing.

BERMAN: Sorry, I missed the last part you were saying, Elizabeth.

Dr. Gostin, last thing, on the schools they say there's no need to close schools. We know at least one school in Ohio was closed for a few days. Overreaction?

GOSTIN: Yes, I think it is an overreaction because kids are not infectious and even if they were they'll just go to the mall, the movies theaters and you'll exacerbate the problem. School closures almost never work and particularly in a case as low risk. I think we're OK.

PEREIRA: All right, Dr. Lawrence Gostin and Elizabeth Cohen, great to have you with us. Give us some perspective.

We'll take a short break @THISHOUR. We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

PEREIRA: All week we have been exploring our roots here at CNN. And boy, oh boy, I've been waiting for Friday because guess what? Spotlight's on you, my man.

BERMAN: Indeed. It was my search to verify a family legend. The legend is that basically I descended from one of the most important thinkers in the history ever. That search took me to places, even continents, I never imagined.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

(MUSIC)

BERMAN: Why am I sitting here in front of this statue in this city no less, Amsterdam, a city of canals and bridges and a country of windmills and tulips? I'm here because the two of us, we share a name. This is Baruch Spinoza. I am John Spinoza Berman.

(MUSIC)

BERMAN: Baruch Spinoza was a 17th century Dutch Jewish philosopher, a very big deal. Statues, portrait, even streets bear his name.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He has become an icon of the reason of a solitary thinker who braved not only his own community but also more generally religious.

BERMAN: Spinoza's petty ideas about God being separate from nature and at the time the notions of freedom of thought were so radical they got him ex-communicated in 1556. Scandalous then, now revered.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: So he's a proper symbol for all kinds of things that we'd like to touch on.

BERMAN: I like Spinoza. It's a good name to have.

Good name, great lineage, if it's mine, which is what I grew up being told.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: When you come by here with friends, do you point up --

(CROSSTALK)

BERMAN: My father, Gerald Spinoza Berman, would point proudly at the name carved in the Boston Public Library.

When you would see it, what would you think?

GERALD SPINOZA BERMAN, FATHER OF JOHN BERMAN: I would think, that's me, my family. That's my heritage. My grandfather's name was Spinoza, and we thought that we were descendents from Baruch Spinoza.

BERMAN: You thought you were a philosopher, too?

GERALD SPINOZA BERMAN: Exactly.

BERMAN: Which would make me the son of a philosopher friend, or something like that?

There's just one problem. According to Dutch philosophy professor, Michael Reasonberg (ph)

What do you know about Spinoza, the man in terms of his family life?

MICHAEL REASONBERG (ph), DUTCH PHILOSOPHY PROFESSOR: Well, it's fairly simple to say. He simply did not have any family life at all. He was never married.

BERMAN: No marriage, no known children. So how did my family and would-be philosopher prince father account for this?

GERALD SPINOZA BERMAN: We were brought up that we were brought up by a long line of bastards.

BERMAN: A long line of, yes, bastards. Yes, remember that line. But seriously, what is the truth? Am I gloated with philosopher DNA? After a lifetime of expectations, at last, Michelle Birchenbrach (ph), from Ancestry.com, helped begin the search for an answer, an answer that intriguely begins in Amsterdam, the birth place of the philosopher.

MICHELLE BIRCHENBRACH (ph), ANCESTRY.COM: The first was Benjamin Spinoza and Benjamin is your second great grandfather. He was born in Amsterdam.

BERMAN: I don't speak really good Dutch.

But you don't have to speak Dutch to go to Amsterdam. Nearly everyone there speaks perfect English, including Heddy Berg (ph).

HEDDY BERG (ph), CURATOR & MANAGER OF MUSEUM AFFAIRS, AMSTERDAM JEWISH HISTORICAL BUILDING: I'll show you these two buildings.

BERMAN: Including Heddy Berg (ph), the curator and manager for the city's Jewish Historical Museum. She walked me through the area.

BERG (ph): An orphanage was here. There were all kinds of institutions also on the same street.

BERMAN: So Benjamin Spinoza was born here in 1850 in 121 -- I can't say it.

BERG (ph): (SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE)

BERMAN: Just like you said.

BERG (ph): Yes. (SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE)

BERMAN: (SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE)

(LAUGHTER)

Your language is a pain.

BERG (ph): I know.

BERMAN: The neighborhood revolved around gorgeous building.

(SINGING)

BERMAN: The 339-year-old Portuguese synagogue.

BERG (ph): It's all lines with gold letter of 17th century. BERMAN: It was built by the tight-knit community which emigrated from

the Liberian peninsula.

How many people were members?

BERG (ph): There were 4,500 Portuguese Jews part of this community.

BERMAN: This synagogue was everything?

BERG (ph): Yes.

BERMAN: It's to live outside this community would have been next to impossible?

BERG (ph): Yeah. It was for the really an option. I mean, Baruch Spinoza was really the first Jew at that time to live outside of the community.

BERMAN: And he got tossed?

BERG (ph): He got tossed. So it was not out of free choice.

BERMAN: Remember, he was ex-ex-communicated in 1656, a problem for him, and a problem for me in my long-held belief that I might be his great, great, great, et cetera grandson. Ancestory.com uncovered a document from 1737.

BIRCHENBRACH (ph): This is Isaac Spinoza, your great grandfather.

BERMAN: Early 1700s?

BIRCHENBRACH: Yes. In Amsterdam. This is your seventh great grandfather. He's talking about Isaac Spinoza of Zali. And then it goes on to talk about his father, Daniel Espinoza of Barbary.

BERMAN: Wait, Barbary?

BIRCHENBRACH: Are you familiar with the Barbary Coast?

BERMAN: Yes. You mean North Africa? Interesting.

BIRCHENBRACH: Zali is part of Morocco.

BERMAN: Morocco, me, the Morocco that's in North Africa. My ancestors immigrated to Amsterdam from the Jewish community in what is now Morocco in 1722.

Well, after Baruch Spinoza was already living in and scandalizing Amsterdam, my people were on a different continent. I am not, it seems, a direct descendent.

So if his story is my story, what is my story? It turns out the answer, buried in the Amsterdam city archives with 700 years of records, is scandalous in its own right, even for Spinoza.

Researcher Eric Hezilar (ph) found the records of my family's early years in Amsterdam in the 1700s. Marked by one four-letter word, debt.

ERIC HEZILAR (ph), RESEARCHER: There's another page. It's another page.

BERMAN: Pages of it.

HEZILAR (ph): It's list after list of dues. 33,295. And a little bit.

BERMAN: 33,000. This is in 1744. That's got to be a lot of money now.

HEZILAR (ph): Half a million.

BERMAN: Half million dollars in debt, I'm not responsible for any of this, am I?

HEZILAR (ph): Well --

(LAUGHTER)

BERMAN: And that's not even the big family scandal. For that, Eric looked nearly 100 years later, 1822. A birth record for another Isaac Spinoza, the great, great grandson of Isaac, the debtor.

HEZILAR (ph): The father's name is -- there's no mention of marriage.

BERMAN: Interesting.

HEZILAR (ph): Very.

BERMAN: So there's a father but no marriage. Is that unusual?

HEZILAR (ph): Very unusual. It's a small community.

BERMAN: but wait. There's more. A record of Isaac's mother.

HEZILAR (ph): Married in 1811.

BERMAN: Ah.

HEZILAR (ph): With a different husband.

BERMAN: Ah.

She had a kid. She had Isaac.

HEZILAR (ph): Yep.

BERMAN: Married to somebody else?

HEZILAR (ph): For years.

BERMAN: And the son, Isaac --

HEZILAR (ph): He's your -- it's a Jewish name for a child without any rights.

BERMAN: His offspring, too. That could be why Isaac's son, Benjamin, left Amsterdam and came to the United States in 1867. Benjamin Spinoza, born in Amsterdam in 1850, died in Boston in 1907. And the Spinoza and Bermans have been there ever since. The search for Spinoza, the connection to Baruch Spinoza came up empty but at least one part was true.

Benjamin Spinoza's father is what is called a Momser. Do you know what that is?

GERALD SPINOZA BERMAN: Not really.

BERMAN: His parents were not married when he was born.

GERALD SPINOZA BERMAN: So that part is true? We come from a line of bastards after all.

BERMAN: Yes, the name on the wall may not be our history but our name filled with its own history.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

PEREIRA: How about that, John Berman. I still think you're one of the greatest thinkers I know.

BERMAN: I appreciate that but the bastard part may be more appropriate.

PEREIRA: I didn't want to touch that at all. The interesting thing, what was the reaction from your dad? That was on camera. Did he have more to say afterwards?

BERMAN: You know, he claims that he was surprised, that he always grew up thinking that he was this philosopher prince. I think that deep down inside we all sort of knew there was something awry given that Baruch Spinoza had no known children. But it's not a common name. I mean it is not --

(CROSSTALK)

PEREIRA: You see Espinoza but not Spinoza.

BERMAN: In Boston, we checked the records and there were no other Spinozas in Boston. It was just this guy and his immediate family. My grandmother was an only child. We never really knew any other Jewish Spinozas in the United States. It was very rare.

PEREIRA: And one of your twins has the middle name Spinoza.

BERMAN: It's a great name. From the age of 4 to 6, people made fun of it because like the nose thing and then it was unique and I embraced it, as I do now.

PEREIRA: This has been a great voyage for all of us. The thing at the root of it, pun intended, there's more of us that have more in common than we think.

(CROSSTALK)

BERMAN: Absolutely.

(LAUGHTER)

Thank you for joining us @THISHOUR. I'm John Berman.

PEREIRA: And I'm Michaela Pereira.

"LEGAL VIEW" with Ashleigh Banfield starts now.