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Ebola Case in U.S. Examined; Preparedness of U.S. For Possible Pandemics Profiled; Secret Service Director Resigns; Interview with Fmr. Ambassador to China Jon Huntsman

Aired October 02, 2014 - 07:00   ET

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

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: They have been very transparent with what's going on in Hawaii. There's a patient out there that they have some suspicions about. A patient who seems to have symptoms, and also recently was in West Africa.

They asked about the travel history, and that's going to warrant more questions, more investigations. It doesn't necessarily, Chris, mean that the patient has Ebola. It doesn't even necessarily mean that the patient should be tested for Ebola, because a lot of things can cause a fever when you're returning from Africa or West Africa. But it prompts the investigation to your point, Chris. That's exactly what should happen.

CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: All right, Sanjay, then the concern shifting back to the situation in Texas is about tracking down who the man had contact with. How is that going? Do we know how many contacts, what counts as a contact, because that's created some confusion about who's at risk in a situation like this?

GUPTA: Yes, absolutely. And I think this needs to be made even more clear, and it's a source of questions I think today for some of the people making these guidelines. But we're hearing the numbers somewhere between 12 and 20. So you already get an idea that this is not easy. You're trying to figure out every person that this Mr. Duncan may have had contact with over the four-day period. Look at your life, Chris, the number of contacts you may have had over a few- day period. It's challenging is my point.

He was sick, so he was not likely out in public places, just didn't feel well. But it's still going to be challenging to find all of those people who counts as a contact, certainly anyone he had direct contact with. That could be people that he shook hands with, people who were the health care workers in the hospitals, and obviously anybody he was residing in the same household with as well, family members, close friends who may have visited. People like that.

GUPTA: Look, now that we understand it's about an abundance of caution, and not about what the reasonable range of contagion would be, it makes sense to go as broad as you possibly can. Sanjay, stay with us. Let me hand it over to Michaela to continue the conversation.

MICHAELA PEREIRA, CNN ANCHOR: To continue the conversation we're going to bring in Dr. Irwin Redlener. He's the director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia University right here in New York City. Dr. Sanjay Gupta is going to join our conversation. Doctor, thank you so much for joining us. It's good to have both of you with us in fact.

I want to talk to you, given your role as the director for the National Center for Disaster Preparedness, you say it's inevitable we're going to see more cases. We know that there is a potential for a case in Hawaii. We've seen what happened in Dallas. Tell us why, tell us how big you think this could be.

DR. IRWIN REDLENER, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY: The reality is of course that there are many, many people living here who are from countries in West Africa where this disease is really has emerged in full force. And so there's an inevitable amount of travel back and forth between the United States and those countries in Africa. It's part of commerce. It's part of people visiting family members. It's just absolutely for certain that there's going to be a lot of travel that we cannot stop and should not stop.

So in view of that, it is highly likely that there will be other cases of people coming over, asymptomatic. And of course when they're asymptomatic, they're not a danger to other people. After they get here, after a period of incubation where it's locating itself in the body, but before they're contagious, before there sick, where it's going to be possible for people to get sick, be diagnosed with Ebola.

PEREIRA: And Sanjay, I think that's where some of the disconnect is. This incubation period, correct me if I'm wrong, anywhere from two days to 21 days?

GUPTA: That's right. And what that basically means, Michaela, is you have been exposed, you have the virus in your body, but you're not sick. Even if you got a blood test, it would not show the Ebola virus because it's in such small amounts. But within 21 days, you could become sick. If you don't get sick within 21 days, you're sort of given the all-clear flag. But within that 21 day period you could potential be sick. And to Dr. Redlener's point, you could travel around the world several times during the 21-day period.

PEREIRA: And therein lies our problem. So the next question is, how do we know, how can we have confidence, should we have confidence that our hospitals, and not just hospitals, medical centers, medical facilities, traveling nurses, that the medical professionals in our country are ready, they're prepared, they have the tools and resources they need?

REDLENER: Well, theoretically, they are ready. They've been getting notifications and so forth and so on. But we're talking about educating hundreds of thousands of doctors, health care workers, ambulance drivers, nurses, and also not just in the hospital. There are people going to their doctor's offices. So we have to depend on the entire system becoming aware of what they need to be looking for. That snafu at the hospital in Texas is a warning sign and that we really need to step up our capacity to inform everybody. PEREIRA: So how do we do that? You probably have a better sense of

that. Explain to us how that happens. How do everybody, quote- unquote, get the memo?

REDLENER: What happens is really there's a multilevel information campaign that's very intense. That starts with the CDC, the Centers for Disease Control. But every state, every state health department, every local health department, for example here in New York City, has been aggressively working to get the message out through the networks. It just takes a long time. It doesn't necessarily sink in immediately. And hopefully this incident in Texas with the misinformation about the travel from Africa will be kind of a wakeup call.

PEREIRA: That's such an important point that one travel history missed, we know, Sanjay, that that patient had contact with up to 20 people. That includes some children, we're told five children. Are children extra vulnerable? Talk to us about the concern for these kids.

GUPTA: Well you know, they're kids, and obviously that just invokes a lot of emotion. Obviously they seem to have come in contact with him. In terms of being more vulnerable, perhaps. You know, younger children and older people sometimes their immune systems aren't quite as strong as people more in the prime of their lives. But they get treated just like anybody else in the sense that they're going to be monitored for two -- two times a day for 21 days. So that part of it is the same. But yes, you know, obviously it raises the level of concern a little bit.

PEREIRA: And it's interesting. We talk about children and the level of concern, the emotional impact it has on us because of course they're our littlest ones that we want to protect so fiercely. This is all going on, Dr. Redlener, at the same time we're dealing with an enterovirus. And that is concerning in and of itself. Are we equipped to handle two concerning and potentially deadly issues?

REDLENER: Well, here's the problem that I've actually been very concerned about. We see what's happening with the new virus, the enterovirus, and with the Ebola situation. And are we going to take this as a wake-up call, or is it more going to be like a snooze alarm, where we're going to be alarmed for the next couple of weeks, we'll hit the snooze alarm, and back into our state of complacency.

The problem is, for example, the hospital preparedness program, the disaster funded by the federal government, is cut by 50 percent over the last decade. It's incredible. Also cutbacks to health departments across the country have been devastating. So the ability to track the patients, or the potential patients that Sanjay has been talking about, has been very undermined by this constant cutting back of resources just when we need them.

PEREIRA: One of the things that we have really worked to maintain here, Sanjay, is a level of urgency, not hysteria, not panic, but urgency. GUPTA: Well, you know, Ebola obviously, it invokes fear. And people

can understand that. All we've heard about it is this terrible bloody disease in Africa that kills 90 percent of the people. We're learning more about Ebola than we ever have.

But I think it's a really interesting point that you and Dr. Redlener make. Ebola is not going to be the next contagion that people worry about. It's not going to be Ebola. But it will likely be something at some point. And I'm just curious, Dr. Redlener's points about how prepared we are for that, because we're, I think we're prepared for Ebola. But what about the next thing? How well do these public health --

PEREIRA: Quick response, Dr. Redlener.

GUPTA: How equipped are the hospitals?

REDLENER: Exactly. And in fact we are really facing a major challenge here. We've got to restore those funds for the hospital preparedness and for the public health upgrading so that we can deal with this. Really, thank goodness that this was not a bird flu or something like that that could have been a very lethal pandemic that we really would have been in trouble for. But right now much more needs to be done.

PEREIRA: Early days, much needs to be done, and part of it is having this conversation. Dr. Redlener, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, the two of you are excellent at this. Thank you so much for helping us understand it all. Chris?

CUOMO: All right, to another situation in terms of how we deal with Ebola is that we're now sending 3,000 American troops to the Ebola hot zone. Their mission is to help in hospitals and treatment centers, specifically in Liberia. Now, some troops are there already. So how are they staying safe from the virus? That's a pressing concern. Will they get hurt while trying to help? CNN's Barbara Starr has more on that from the Pentagon. We keep hearing, Barbara, the best way to keep the United States safe from Ebola is to fight it aggressively, specifically in West Africa. What do we know?

BARBARA STARR, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Chris. Well, the U.S. troops, some already there, are supposed to help build hospitals, build treatment centers, and assist the African staff there in treating, but not come into direct contact with Ebola patients. That's how it's supposed to go. But what if inadvertently they do? What if U.S. troops get sick?

Well, CNN has learned that now the Pentagon very much behind the scenes is considering whether those troops would have to be quarantined, isolated, monitored in some fashion, before they can come home, before they go back to their families, their home bases, the towns where they live. Are those 3,000 American troops going to face quarantine?

It's a real concern for the Pentagon. It is something they're concerning. They have not come to a decision. What if U.S. troops get sick there? There's only a very limited amount of evacuation capacity.

The other question for the Pentagon this morning -- will the troops be treated in Africa? Will they be some military capability to evacuate them back to the United States for some type of treatment? These are the issues they are dealing with. The person at the forefront, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Martin Dempsey, he is making this a very top priority, so concerned, we're told, that behind the scene as couple of weeks ago he called in a number of experts to his office here at the Pentagon for a very private briefing on the Ebola situation. Chris?

CUOMO: All right, Barbara, it is confusing because you're not exactly sure who will get it and who won't other than knowing the proximity is the key to transmission. So obviously every move you make will be scrutinized. Thank you for the reporting.

And remember, in the next hour, we're going to take a look at your questions about Ebola. We know everybody's worried about it. We want to try to keep our concerns in check with information as we know it. So send us questions about how it is spread, what you're worried about, what you're hearing, when you don't believe. And do it via twitter, and use that #Ebola Q&A. All right, Michaela.

PEREIRA: Another area of concern, the Secret Service, a series of security lapses there. One big secret she kept from the White House, now Julia Pierson is now the former director of the Secret Service. First she got leveled by lawmakers at a House hearing over a series of embarrassing security breaches involving President Obama. And when it became clear that she wasn't exactly forthcoming about a contractor with a gun near the president in an elevator at the CDC, her 30-year career at the Secret Service came to an end. Let's bring in White House correspondent Michelle Kosinski. Now the question is, what's next?

MICHELLE KOSINSKI, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Hi, Michaela. We didn't hear Julia Pierson give too many substantive answers during her three hours of testimony before the House oversight committee this week. But what we did hear her do repeatedly was list the progress she felt she made at the agency, vowing to stay on and fix the problems. But as more information came out, not from the secret service itself but from whistleblowers, she resigned yesterday. And the White House said the president agreed that new leadership now is necessary.

One of the most surprising things to emerge now was that the other security incident that happened three days before the White House fence jumper, this was about two weeks ago in Atlanta, a security guard with a gun in an elevator with the president, but this wasn't cleared through Secret Service, turned out to be violation of protocol. Now we know the White House wasn't even told about this until just before it became very unpleasantly public on Tuesday. Now among the issues that are going to be looked at are the culture within the agency, training, staffing, and morale. Michaela?

PEREIRA: All right, we'll be watching it with you, Michelle, thanks so much. A lot of other things going on in the news today. John Berman, good

morning.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning to you. The Taliban claiming responsibility for a wave of suicide bombings in Afghanistan, the latest coming overnight, killing three Afghan army personnel and wounding eight others. The attack targeted an army vehicle in the air of Kabul. This is the third deadly bombing in the last 24 hours targeting the Afghan military, all of them set off by the Taliban.

Hunting season is on hold in large parts of northeastern Pennsylvania as the search for Eric Frein expands. Sections of Delaware State Forest will now be closed as police search for Frein. That is the man accused of murdering Officer Brian Dixon. The move comes a day after officials revealed they had found pipe bombs in the woods near Pike County which includes that state forest.

It took 12 long years, but a Texas girl abducted in 2002 has been found. Sabrina Allen went missing when she was four years old when she was taken by her noncustodial mother. They were found by authorities living in seclusion in Mexico. The mother is now back in Texas to face trial. The girl is in the care of a psychologist until she's ready to be reunited with her father.

Police in Fort Lauderdale searching for a couple of would-be crooks who tried to rob a gas station screens store. Look at this. Their hands were so full, though, with beer, that they could not open the door, which is a problem I have with the refrigerator. Obviously a flaw in their escape plan, when the guy put down the beer to open the door, he got out.

PEREIRA: Where is your music now, John Berman?

BERMAN: You need music to set this over, some good Bjork.

PEREIRA: This is the thing -- precious cargo, you don't want to drop the beer.

BERMAN: Like I said.

CUOMO: Were they drunk?

BERMAN: They were about to be.

CUOMO: I think he had a push/pull issue there.

PEREIRA: I have that issue all the time. I do push/pull here all the time, not generally with beer in my hands.

CUOMO: Who risks going to jail for beer?

PEREIRA: People like beer, Chris.

CUOMO: It seems the answer is almost everybody?

BERMAN: I don't know why you're anti-beer? CUOMO: I'm not anti-beer. You should have seen what he was drinking

last night. We'll discuss on Twitter.

We have for you breaking new details and new concerns about Ebola specifically in the U.S. as we learn more about how this Texas hospital let an Ebola patient go home. We're going to speak with Jon Huntsman. You'll remember he was the governor of Utah but he was also as ambassador of China someone who was integral in figuring out how to fight the H1N1 virus. Remember how worried we were about that. So we'll get his perspective.

PEREIRA: Excellent. After weeks of dealing with international issues, the president tries to get back on track on today with a major speech on the economy. Is that what voters want? John King will take a look on INSIDE POLITICS.

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CUOMO: Welcome back to NEW DAY. The big question this morning is -- is the U.S. prepared to handle Ebola? Well, why would there are any shake to the confidence? Well, the response to the first U.S. case would seem to say we're not ready. Because the hospital officials let a man go with the virus when he came and said that he had been to the hot zone in West Africa. So the global response is also coming up short, allowing cases to expand by the thousands in West Africa. So what can we do better? Are we ready?

We have someone who can help us address this issue, as well as what's going on in Hong Kong, a rare two-fer that we're going to get with Jon Huntsman, a former U.S. ambassador to China, so understands what's going on in Hong Kong very well. Also, was the governor of Utah and is now the host of No Labels Radio with Jon Huntsman on Sirius XM. Governor or Ambassador, I want to be deferential but you have titles, so we'll just go with Jon right now. And also speaking about Ebola is a comfort zone for you, because you had to handle, as ambassador, what China was dealing with, the H1N1 virus. And obviously that was very scary, of a different magnitude than Ebola.

From what you understand, and what you remember as governor in setting up the health protocols for something like Ebola, do you think the U.S. is equipped?

JON HUNTSMAN, FMR. U.S. AMBASSARD TO CHINA: Thank you for having me on. I think without question the U.S. is equipped. We've been through the H1N1, we've been through things like Y2K, where you've got local governments that have step up and prepare for the unknown.

Sometimes when you make a mistake, or when a certain protocol isn't followed early on, that's a very loud-and-clear reminder that people need to begin paying attention and making sure that things are prepared for any eventuality. So I've seen it both from an international standpoint overseas and I've also seen it as governor of a state, and that is you work with the local health officials in your state. You got to work with the emergency relief folks. You got to work with a whole lot of volunteers and make sure you've got stockpiled medicines and a whole lot of beds available beyond that which your health sciences and hospitals traditionally make available. And that takes a lot of coordinating and it sometimes takes additional line items on a budget to get done. So it consume as lot of bandwidth from state leadership and city leadership, but it also takes a lot of dollars and cents to get right.

But I suspect our country, because we work best at the local government level -- while Washington may be dysfunctional, we have state governments and city governments that do things fairly well. I would guess that we're prepared to deal with whatever eventuality comes our way as it relates to Ebola.

CUOMO: And of course, not to play semantics, but it is a little bit of a guessing game until you get into it, and that's really when you know how it is, that's what shakes confidence, looking at Texas. But let's assume Texas is a one-off, because they seem to be doing it more aggressively in Hawaii, with this next suspected case. Hopefully the patient doesn't have Ebola.

But you mentioned budgeting as well. Have we cut money too much to the systems and processes that are necessary to handle an outbreak of something like Ebola? Have we not put enough money into the vaccines that help prevent something like Ebola?

HUNTSMAN: Well, I think the Center for Disease Control and our health establishment, they've got enough flexibility with the funds that are available to be able to produce whatever they need as an antidote.

But fundamentally, our research and development budgets across the board are being impacted by the current budget situation. And that long-term is -- is a bad thing. As we fail to do anything with respect to entitlements, which -- the bottom line of which is eating up all remaining aspects of our budget, less and less you have any kind of flexibility on research and development funds, so that ultimately is going to impact exactly this kind of conversation.

But the real tragedy is playing out in West Africa. And that is where you see countries like Sierra Leone and Liberia and Guinea, which are experiencing significant consequences. You know, 3,000 dead, the prospects for a million and a half infected by January. Little infrastructure to deal effectively with how this is playing out.

You've got two of those countries, in Sierra Leone and Liberia, that are coming off of ten years of civil war and just beginning the prospects of economic growth and stability. That now has been dashed. When you look at their economic growth forecast numbers, probably a quarter of a billion dollars will be wiped away in terms of potential cash flow from their economic uplift. That's going to leave them once again in a very, very precarious situation. And trust again will have to be built between the citizens and the governments of these countries that were already very fragile.

CUOMO: If nothing else, this first case in Texas did heighten the urgency of dealing with West Africa it seems. There is an infusion of troops going there. Hopefully we can keep them safe and they can help mitigate the circumstances there. Now let's turn to another source of urgency, what's going on in Hong

Kong, another situation you understand very well. There have been periodic movements for democracy over the years, certainly in this past century in China, mainland China specifically. What makes what's happening in Hong Kong different and of concern to you?

HUNTSMAN: Well, you have a clash of cultures fundamentally between the freedom-loving Hong Kongers, of which there's 7.5 million. They want to preserve their freedom; they want an expanded democracy, which was envisioned when the basic law was put together in the late '80s and early '90s before the turnover in 1997. And the other part of the clash of cultures is out of Beijing, where you've got a new leader in Xi Jinping, who is two years into his probably 10-year administration. And his preoccupation is with domestic stability.

So when you've got the need for domestic stability, and the desire for more openness and a robust democracy as expressed through directly electing the chief executive of Hong Kong, which today is a special autonomous region, that's going to produce what you're seeing play out in the financial district of Hong Kong. It doesn't have an easy solution and the protesters aren't going away any time soon.

CUOMO: Well, but that's the concern, right? Because I do not like doing the comparison to Tiananmen Square because of the hundreds and maybe thousands who were massacred there. But it is the 25-year anniversary. It is the same dynamic of how the protest, coming in mass numbers -- although of course as many as a million 25 years ago in Tiananmen Square in Beijing. Here, less but still, maybe 100,000 people you have there. What do you fear might happen if the government decides to use force and you have that big a population in such a tight area?

HUNTSMAN: Well, if you get beyond simply the police forces in Hong Kong responding, as they have and as they will continue to, which is to say, calling in the 6,000 garrisoned People's Liberation Army troops that are stationed around Hong Kong, that would be an utter disaster.

And I don't see it getting to that point. And I think Chief Executive Leung is likely to blow in the wind for a while. I don't think Beijing is going to make a decision any time soon. They're going to leave it to the local authorities to try to figure this one out. The problem there is Chief Executive Leung has very little respect by the local folks, who see him as being in the hip pocket of Beijing, because of what was a mostly failed selection process in 2012 to bring him to the chief executive slot.

So, ultimately, I do believe there's going to have to be some sort of compromise. They're going to have to look at the white paper, which was distributed in June of this year, that basically rolled back some of the early promises that were made on the direct election. And it still is a white paper so there may be some ways that you can expand the pool of candidates that ultimately run for Chief Executive. There may be some way of getting the Chief Executive Leung out of office and putting someone like Anson Chan in, who's a respected leader, certainly does well with the more progressive segments of society in Hong Kong. And there is precedent for that as well. But I suspect there's going to be some behind-the-scenes negotiating to try to find some middle way as the protesters remain exactly where they are.

CUOMO: We hope so, because the last thing we want to see is any type of confrontation. It could only be disaster.

Jon Huntsman, thank you so much. Appreciate the perspective --

HUNTSMAN: Pleasure being with you, thank you.

CUOMO: -- on two very important issues today. And you can catch No Labels Radio with Jon Huntsman on Sirius XM's POTUS Channel, Saturdays at 10:00 a.m. Eastern.

Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi could have her eye on the job again in 2016. Why is she confident Democrats can retake the House, even if it takes a few years? John King is going to investigate for you on INSIDE POLITICS. Coming up.

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