Tuesday, October 14, 2014

USG criticism high. Bill O’Reilly calling for resignation of Tom Frieden. I meet by phone with the New York Times Editorial Board. Also, I do NBC Nightly News, Fox News with Greta Van Susteren and MSNBC with Rachel Maddow. After I got off the air, Rachel tells her audience how proud she was of herself to have gotten me on her show since I was such an icon in medicine and public health. Oct. 14 -21, 2014 - From October 14 through October 21, the situation was so intense that I do not have time to document historical notes on a day by day basis. I am only doing this retrospectively now and will give dates as I recall. However over this period of time in light of the crisis of confidence against CDC and Tom Frieden related to a number of issues culminated by the fact that was allowed to fly back from Cleveland to Dallas, this was clear that Tom Frieden was in significant trouble over several days Sec. Burwell would call me usually in the late evening and nighttime asking for my advice about what we should do the CDC. At one point, I believe on October 14 or 15, she called me at night as I was in my car driving home. I parked the car in front of my house and continued to speak with her. Approximately 9 o'clock at night. She asked me what I thought about the possibility of removing Frieden from the job and wanted my advice about who could be a leading global health figure who could take Tom's place. I discussed forcibly with her that I believe that Tom was an outstanding public health official and a man of great integrity. However, I told her that I have to frankly tell her that Tom's staff is not serving him well. For example many of the people from CDC who of gone to Dallas to oversee the situation in the care of are people who know Ebola from behind the desk but left even never taking care of the patient or have done so many years ago. I told her to give Tom a chance and that I would try to speak to Tom about relying less on advice from his staff and more on his own judgment. Again during this time I have had multiple conversations, on a daily basis usually late at night with Tom Frieden. I will refer to these specifically below. In general, I was trying to convince him that it is possible that the CDC protocols as they exist on their website are not adequate for the tertiary care setting that we have in large hospitals such as Texas Presbyterian and elsewhere in the United States. Tom keeps on insisting that the CDC protocols have worked for decades in the field in Africa and that his staff tells him that the reason why the Dallas nurses got infected was likely be cost they had some breach in the protocol. I literally begged him over the phone that he should not say this and that we should re-examine the CDC protocols. This will all become clear after we admit to NIH Special Clinical Studies Unit (SCSU) at the NIH Clinical Center on Oct. 16, 2014 (see below).