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The Lead with Jake Tapper

Too Late to Stop Ebola?; Banning Air Travel?; Two Hands on Deck; Obama Appoints Ron Klain as Ebola Czar; Interview with Congressman Tim Murphy of Pennsylvania

Aired October 17, 2014 - 16:00   ET

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

JAKE TAPPER, CNN ANCHOR: The World Health Organization says it missed the writing on the wall with Ebola. But now that the virus is hopping across the globe, is it too late to stop it?

I'm Jake Tapper at the National Institutes of Health and this is THE LEAD.

The national lead, the nightmare virus tearing travel apart at the seams, Ebola grounding planes, trains, automobiles, even a ship.

Plus, the man who lost the fight over all those hanging chads tapped to win the war against Ebola. Just what will President Obama's new Ebola czar do differently to put the U.S. response back on track?

And the politics lead. One of Vice President Biden's sons booted from the Navy after testing positive for cocaine. Nothing, of course, stays hidden forever.

Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to THE LEAD.

We are live today from outside the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, where of course one of the Ebola patients is now being treated. And that's where we begin with our medical lead, our national lead.

Health care officials across the country are scurrying to make sure their towns are not the next to make the diagnosis that's whipping up fears of a global pandemic. There are four patients being currently treated for Ebola in the United States, dozens of health workers in Texas who have been told not to travel after one of them ended up on a cruise ship. And 16 people in Ohio are being monitored after an infected nurse touched down there. Hundreds more are being warned after they shared a plane with her.

It is a fast-moving and frightening public health emergency. Today, President Obama again made it clear that the country and the world need to do more and fast if they want to stop the virus from slashing through cities here in the United States.

And, today, CNN broke the story that Democratic lawyer Ron Klain will manage the daunting task for the White House.

In Texas, the epicenter of the U.S. outbreak, nearly 80 health care workers are under close watch, with twice daily temperature checks. Everyone who came in contact with Thomas Eric Duncan, the Liberian man who was hospitalized and then died from the disease at Dallas' Texas Health Presbyterian, has been told to shelter in place, Texas' Department of Health instructing them, stay home, do not use public transit, do not go out around large crowds.

The Dallas nurses, Nina Pham and Amber Vinson, they treated Duncan. They have now both been taken from the hospital where they caught Ebola, Pham whisked in a specially outfitted plane and then escorted by a phalanx of police and emergency vehicles to right here, right behind me, building 10 at the National Institutes of Health, where she is now being treated.

In this video released by her colleagues in Texas, she is looking cheerful. And the doctors here in Maryland thankfully promised she would walk out of the hospital. Let us hope and pray so. The case that has the health community holding its collective breath is that of the second nurse, Amber Vinson.

Frontier Airlines is now reaching out to 800 people who flew on the plane that took Vinson to Cleveland after authorities revealed she may have had symptoms days before previously revealed to the public. The worry that Ebola could become a biomedical ticking time bomb has transportation officials on high alert today.

New York's Governor Andrew Cuomo announced plans to conduct random Ebola response drills on the New York City subway, which handles six million riders a day. Police also held passengers on a bus today in Washington, D.C., after one rider reportedly from West Africa vomited.

CNN has reporters positioned across the country following all of these threads as they develop.

First, we're going to begin with CNN aviation correspondent Rene Marsh.

Rene, there are of course alerts streaming from all over. Another Texas hospital worker is quarantine right now. She's on a cruise ship. What is the latest there?

RENE MARSH, CNN AVIATION CORRESPONDENT: Well, Jake, this is a seven- day cruise. And now there are reports that someone on board is being monitored for the deadly virus.

It's enough to raise concern. But experts say the risk is low. That ship right now on the water and headed back to Texas as we speak.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MARSH (voice-over): A lab supervisor from the hospital where Ebola patient Thomas Eric Duncan died remains quarantined on a cruise ship. Eric Lupher is one of the more than 4,000 passengers on board.

ERIC LUPHER, PASSENGER: I think it's more the, oh, holy cow, we're on a boat with an Ebola scare. I don't think it's, oh, I need to get off or I'm going to get sick. MARSH: The woman never had contact with Duncan, but may have had contact with his fluid samples. In a statement, Carnival Cruise Lines says: "At no time has the individual exhibited any symptoms or signs of infection. And it has been 19 days since she was in the lab with the testing samples."

The lab tech boarded the Carnival Magic on October 12, before being notified of increased monitoring requirements.

DR. WILLIAM SCHAFFNER, DEPARTMENT OF PREVENTIVE MEDICINE CHAIRMAN, VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY: If I were on this cruise ship, I wouldn't be concerned at all. In a vast excess of caution, she is isolating herself, which from an objective science-based risk assessment is quite unnecessary.

MARSH: The ship is currently returning to Texas. Mexico refused to allow it to dock. And a request by the U.S. government to evacuate the passenger through Belize was rejected. Meanwhile, two co-workers of the lab technicians, nurses Nina Pham and Amber Vinson, are being treated for Ebola.

Before being diagnosed, Vinson flew round-trip from Dallas to Cleveland. Frontier Airlines is notifying up to 800 passengers, including those who flew with her and those who later traveled on one of the same planes.

LUPHER: I'm more worried than I am angry. It's kind of one of those things where it happened. Now I just want to be positive and deal with it and move on.

MARSH: And other Ebola scares continue. A sick passenger died on a flight en route from Nigeria to JFK Thursday. Emergency responders determined Ebola was not the cause.

And at the Pentagon this morning, a woman who said she had been to West Africa vomited in a parking lot. She was taken to a hospital for evaluation.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

MARSH: So everyone acting out of an abundance of caution.

In Texas, the state where these two nurses were infected with Ebola, the state is now directing all health care workers who had direct contact or even entered Thomas Duncan's room to stay away from public places where people congregate. That is all outlined in this one page or here.

That essentially means they are not allowed at restaurants, grocery stores, theaters and, of course, not on commercial flights or cruise ships -- Jake.

TAPPER: All right, a country on edge. Rene Marsh, thank you so much.

Amber Vinson, the nurse, spent four days in Akron, Ohio, her hometown, preparing for her wedding before she was hospitalized with Ebola back in Texas. But evidence that she may have had some symptoms while there has officials racing to track down everyone she might have come in contact with, anyone who might be exposed; 16 people, including members of her family, are being monitored right now around the clock.

Doctors are also keeping tabs on other people who sat next to her on flights.

CNN national correspondent Susan Candiotti is on the ground now in Akron, Oklahoma.

We know that Amber Vinson was potentially contagious now for much longer than we originally had been told. How has that changed the way, Susan, that officials in Ohio are responding to this crisis?

SUSAN CANDIOTTI, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, not only in Ohio, but elsewhere, too, Jake, because now they're learning that obviously the protective gear that nurses Vinson and Pham were wearing didn't work, didn't protect them completely from Ebola. So it's expanding the definition of contact, at least as far as getting doctors to talk to people more about what kind of contact you might have had.

And in the case of Amber Vinson, again, growing evidence that she may have been feeling odd while she was here Saturday and Sunday. Here's how the CDC put it.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DR. CHRIS BRADEN, CENTERS FOR DISEASE CONTROL AND PREVENTION: She rested for a long time on some days. She said she felt funny, those types of things, but nothing specific. The judgment that we came up to is that we can't rule out that she wasn't ill, OK, for the time that she was here in Ohio.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CANDIOTTI: And admittedly, the CDC is now saying that it shouldn't have told her that it was all right for her to get on that plane, even though she had just a slight -- despite her only having a slight fever, Jake.

So, again, it is changing the way they are looking at how they should be monitoring people who might be infected -- Jake.

TAPPER: Susan Candiotti in Akron, Ohio, thank you so much.

As federal officials here rush to guard against Ebola, the World Health Organization today admitted that it bungled worldwide response to the outbreak. In a memo obtained by the Associated Press, the agency writes -- quote -- "Nearly everyone involved in the outbreak response failed to see some fairly plain writing on the wall."

CNN chief medical correspondent Sanjay Gupta, he is in Atlanta.

Sanjay, thanks for joining us.

This is a startling admission. If the WHO can't handle this, why should we have any confidence that Ebola can be stopped by individuals in places like Akron, Ohio?

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN SENIOR MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, they definitely bungled things and they admitted that. I will talk more about that in a second.

But I will say that I don't think that necessarily means that it can't be handled going into the future. One of the things to keep in mind, Jake, since 1976, there have been a couple dozen nearly outbreaks. And every single time, it's been handled fairly easily. This was different in a few different ways.

There was this idea that patients were moving more, they were getting to big cities. It was a more globalized society. And I think the World Health Organization just didn't anticipate how significant that movement was going to be. And it was just much more challenging to track all these patients and to track all these contacts. And by the time they realized how widespread it had become, it was sort of starting to get out of control, their words, not mine.

And that's sort of the situation that we're in. But keep in mind, Senegal, there was a case there. They were able to control, now some say Senegal now is free of Ebola. Nigeria, they were many cases there. They're now basically on their way to saying that Nigeria is going to be eradicated of Ebola as well.

So it can be done. But it's going to require a much more Herculean effort than in times past. They should have recognized that earlier, but I don't think it means that they can't act on it now.

TAPPER: And, of course, Sanjay, the cases here, with the exception of the NBC cameraman, the cases that we have seen here we have seen people on the front lines, health care workers, doctors, nurses, people treating patients with Ebola.

We have heard a passenger who sat three feet away from Amber Vinson, the second nurse, on that Frontier Airlines flight, and that passenger said the nurse who is helping him monitor his symptoms is not as safe as he would like her to be. And yet, Sanjay, there still seems to be no consistent standard for how to treat these potentially very sick, potentially infectious people.

GUPTA: Keep in mind it's important to categorize these people for who they are and what's going on with them.

Somebody who sat next to somebody who subsequently was diagnosed with Ebola is not necessarily infected themselves, obviously not necessarily infectious or contagious themselves. What the nurse is likely doing is taking that person's temperature.

So beyond the obvious things, the normal safety precautions, washing your hands, putting on gloves and things like that, there's really no other safety standard. She is not treating this person for Ebola because this person doesn't have Ebola, doesn't have the infection.

Even that person, I think the person you're talking about who sat on the plane close to Ms. Vinson, he doesn't even need to be quarantined, because you only get quarantined if you are potentially a danger to the public. And in this case, he's not been diagnosed with an infection.

So some of this is confusing because people are throwing around various terms, quarantine, isolation, infected, not infected. This person is not a threat to the public health and he hasn't even been diagnosed with Ebola. And the chances are very low that he will ever get sick.

Remember Patrick Sawyer, Jake? He was the guy that flew to Nigeria and then got -- when he got to Nigeria in the airport terminal, he collapsed, subsequently died of Ebola. No one on those plane rides that he was on ever got sick. Important point to remember.

TAPPER: Absolutely. Absolutely. Dr. Sanjay Gupta, thank you so much. Appreciate it.

GUPTA: You got it, Jake. Thank you.

TAPPER: The new so-called Ebola czar announced just hours ago, he's already under attack. Can he overcome the rancor and partisanship to lead the country out of the Ebola crisis?

And one after another, lawmakers calling for the White House to ban travel to the U.S. from the countries hardest hit by the Ebola virus. President Obama saying it will only make the problem worse. Who's right? The answer when we come back.

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TAPPER: Welcome back to THE LEAD. I'm Jake Tapper at the National Institutes of Health, where one of the Ebola patients is being treated and where we are today devoting much of our show to this Ebola crisis.

Continuing on our national lead -- some breaking news now, the Obama administration announcing that BARDA, the medical research arm of the department, is working as quickly as possible with pharmaceutical companies to scale up production of Ebola drugs such as ZMapp, you may heard of. This as the president called earlier today for an all- hands-on-deck approach to the nation's Ebola response.

But with criticism growing and fear spreading, the president now seems to think that a one-person approach might help rein in what critics have called a disjointed effort so far.

Today, President Obama announced he would appoint an Ebola czar to coordinate the federal response. To the surprise of many, the president did not turn to an expert in infectious diseases or a medical scholar or a hospital executive. Instead, he tapped a well- known Washington insider.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

TAPPER (voice-over): So if you're a president, what do you do when a deadly disease is terrifying the public and needs to be contained and the response has been questioned? UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We did not correctly diagnose his symptoms as

those of Ebola and we are deeply sorry.

TAPPER: Well, if you're this White House, you put someone in charge. Earlier today, CNN broke the story that President Obama will appoint Ron Klain to be Ebola czar, to help manage and coordinate the federal response to the crisis. Klain is no stranger to high-level responsibility. The 53-year-old lawyer who once clerked for the Supreme Court also served as chief of staff to Vice President Joe Biden.

AL GORE, FORMER VICE PRESIDENT: Bill Clinton and I are ready.

TAPPER: And Vice President Al Gore.

Known for good relationships in the administration and on Capitol Hill, Klain was in charge of the distribution of hundreds of billions of stimulus dollars, though he first became known for leading Al Gore's effort to win the Florida recount in 2000.

KEVIN SPACEY AS RON KLAIN: Yes, Ron Klain.

TAPPER: Kain's ultimately unsuccessful handling of that electoral crisis was the inspiration behind Kevin Spacey's character in the HBO film "Recount."

SPACEY: I'm never going to get a job again in law or in politics.

TAPPER: But what Klain's reputation and resume do not reflect is any sort of medical background. No, the man now tasked with coordinating the national response to a potential pandemic has a background in law, politics and -- well, staying on message. The skill he's lent to President Obama, John Kerry and others as a key debate adviser.

White House officials argue there are enough doctors at the CDC and NIH --

DR. TOM FRIEDEN, CDC DIRECTOR: I'm trained as a physician. I'm trained in internal medicine.

TAPPER: -- what they need now is a top-notch manager. Will Klain have room to do his job? He'll report to two others in the White House, homeland security adviser Lisa Monaco, and national security adviser Susan Rice.

SPACEY: I'm so scared.

TAPPER: And one small odd casting note, Kevin Spacey's pandemic victim character from the movie "Outbreak" is no way related to his portrayal of our new Ebola czar, despite the unfortunate coincidence.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

TAPPER: Republican lawmakers especially have been highly critical of the administration's ability to contain Ebola in the United States. In a hearing yesterday with the nation's top health officials, Pennsylvania Congressman Tim Murphy, a Republican, went so far as to say that the trust and credibility of the government are waning.

And Representative Murphy joins me now live.

Congressman Murphy, I want to read this tweet from Vice President Biden. It says, "There's no one better at getting government to work at its best than Ron Klain. He's a tested manager and problem-solver and a trusted adviser."

And yet you called the appointment of Ron Klain tone deaf. Why?

REP. TIM MURPHY (R), PENNSYLVANIA: Well, because when I had a hearing yesterday, three hours of some great experts in the areas of health care, disease management, et cetera, not one of them said, could you please appoint a campaign worker and a political operative to govern this issue? I think this is a time where America's looking to build confidence in having a medical crisis. And it would have been helpful to have someone who knows something about infectious disease, a disease management, quarantines, all those issues, to help here.

America needs to have confidence. And I would love it if the White House could be working towards that. I love it if the HHS secretary were speaking up and be more involved with this.

I don't think we needed someone else who was there as an expert in politics. This is not a political issue. This is a medical issue.

TAPPER: I hear you. But to play devil's advocate here, Ron Klain handled the stimulus dollars. He is well-regarded in the administration for knowing a lot of people in government, knowing a lot of people on Capitol Hill.

And the White House says this is a managerial position. There are plenty of infectious disease experts at NIH, at CDC.

Is that not an argument that's valid at all?

MURPHY: No, I mean, you're talking about someone who may be a great guy. I don't know him at all. This is nothing personal. This is nothing political.

This is an issue about what America needs and that's some policy differences. These are the issues that have to do with, do we have quarantines and isolations or not? Do we restrict travel from Africa or not? Do we need more planes to bring people over who may be sick, who may be American citizens? How is the military going to handle the infectious disease aspect? What do we advance money through the HHS, which the secretary can do, where this is needed?

These are medical decisions of what happens -- and what do we do in terms of training hospitals, et cetera? Having someone with zero experience in this doesn't do anything to add confidence when America right now is very worried about this issue.

TAPPER: You've been a vocal proponent of banning air travel from the West African countries where the Ebola virus is in its biggest crisis. But there are some health officials who say that it would be to our detriment to impose such a travel ban, particularly, it would encourage people to avoid screening checkpoints and make it harder to fight Ebola at the source level.

What's your response?

MURPHY: Well, I don't agree at all. Look, what you just said is that people would be deceptive in order to get into the United States. And that's a concern now, right now.

And we heard it during our hearing yesterday when Customs asked someone, where have you been? Have you been around someone with Ebola, and let's take your temperature, you already have people -- who wouldn't be willing to lie to get to a top-notch U.S. hospital versus something, in a village in Africa for treatment?

Taking someone's temperature also is not adequate. You have a 21-day spell where someone could be harboring this disease. The fever may not be up yet. "New England Journal of Medicine recent study said 13 percent of the time, the fever would not be up there. Fevers have been fluctuating by CDC in terms of what standard they use. The nurse who flew on that flight from Dallas to Cleveland and back, she did not have a high temperature. Mr. Duncan did not meet that threshold temperature.

There's a lot of other things in the medical sphere which I think is part of that. And when they say -- the administration and others say, we wouldn't be able to get enough help into Africa where it's needed -- that's total nonsense. We can bring whatever military flights, cargo flights, whatever we need to bring there, and we can do that. And I want to do that. I want to be supportive of what we need to do in Africa.

But this other idea that people would be sneaking around, well, that's human nature and they're going to sneak around now. So, I just don't buy this right now.

TAPPER: All right. Congressman Murphy, good to see you. Thank you so much for your views.

MURPHY: Great to see you, Jake. Thank you.

TAPPER: Coming up on THE LEAD, Governor Rick Perry of Texas says American airports need to turn away everyone destined for the U.S. from West Africa. But will a travel ban actually hurt the fight against Ebola?

Plus, nurse Amber Vinson's trip home to plan her dream day has been shattered by an Ebola diagnosis. And now, people in Ohio she came into contact with -- well, they are worried they could be the next person to contract the nightmare virus. That's coming up.

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