Sunday, October 5, 2014

It is interesting that with the 24 hour News Cycle has created its own dynamic. Today (Sunday) the national news was totally dominated by Ebola. Now the questions center around whether we should do entry screening as passengers get off the plane from West Africa even though there is exit screening at the west African airports with temperature taking and questionnaires. DHS and some Congressmen want temperature taking at the entry level also, which would only cut the window of vulnerability down by hours that the person is on the plane. Yet, there will be a meeting at the White House today to discuss entry screening. Frieden is against it, but he is going to lose the argument. Leslie Dach and Sylvia asked me yesterday what I thought about it. I told them that it would be for PR reasons only since it really substantively makes no difference. I went on the Sunday Shows today with FOX News with Chris Wallace and face the Nation. Tom Frieden did This Week and Meet the press and State of the Union. Questions were related to Rand Paul and Bobby Jindal saying that we should shut down flights from West Africa. I totally disagreed. Also, there was concern on Rand Paul’s part that our 3000 to 4000 troops that we are sending to West Africa will get infected and bring Ebola back to the USA. Ridiculous. I got many congratulatory e-mails from people telling me how well I did on the Sunday Shows. In the evening, I did CNN.