Wednesday, October 1, 2014

Big news! A patient from Liberia got on a plane on Sept. 19, arrived in USA (Texas) on Sept. 20 without sxs. On Sept. 24 developed sxs; on Sept. 26 went to an ER in Dallas and was given Z-pack and sent home; on Sept. 28 taken to Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital (Dallas) in critical condition. Ebola dx confirmed. This is first patient to come to USA with Ebola who did not know he/she had Ebola. Soemthing that I have been predicting all along. On conference call with Secretary Burwell, I indicated that after Tom Frieden’s press conference at 5:30 PM yesterday (Sept. 30) there were many requests from the press. On the phone a CDC person said that this is Tom’s responsibility. Burwell snapped at the person saying that we need Tony out there and this is no time to be arguing about “people’s lanes”. Finally, someone put an end to that bullshit. Thanks, Sylvia! Sylvia asked me on the phone to cancel my planned trip for today to San Francisco to partake in a Gala to celebrate UCSF’s Global Health program. Also, I was going to see Ali. I, of course, obliged and Sylvia said that she wanted me to take the lead in “Calming the Country” that will certainly panic about this. She asked me to lead a teleconference last night at 9:00 PM with HHS to discuss the clinical aspects of what this means. And so there is much press today: Bloomberg News TV by phone; AP Radio; CNN New Day; FOX News TV; NPR Here and Now; multiple print media and blogs → AFP; New York Daily News; Washington Post., BuzzFeed; Wall Street Journal; Also, Doctor radio with Marc Siegel; Time Magazine; The Guardian; The Huffington Post; CNN International (I was cut off by satellite issue); Bloomberg TV; CNN “The Lead” with Jake Tapper; WBZ/CBS Radio Boston; MSNBC Hardball with Chris Matthews; NBC Nightly News; FOX with Lou Dobbs; CNN Anderson Cooper 360; WUSA Channel 9. As it turns out, and this was discussed at length on my TV interviews, on the Sept. 26 visit of to the ER, a nurse took a travel history and explicitly said that he told the nurse that he had just arrived from Liberia. The nurse wrote this down, but the clinical team either did not see it or ignored it. It is being played up on TV as a major mis-step on the part of the local health system. I continue to “calm the country” by stressing that contact tracing with appropriate isolation if a contact develops sxs will prevent an outbreak from occurring.