Wednesday, December 3, 2014

At his request, went to the Rayburn Office Building office of Chairman Timothy Murphy (R-PA). Murphy was upset with me at a recent Hearing (see above) when he said that I was making condescending statements about quarantine and why we should not have quarantines. He invited me down to his office to discuss further at a 10:00 AM meeting. With him was Committee Staffer Alan Slobodin (of past outside activity investigation fame) and Murphy’s Chief of Staff Susan Mosychuk and his legislative Director Brad Grantz. Murphy had also been giving Tom Frieden grief about the same issue. Meeting actually went well – cordial, respectful. The underlying theme was still the need in his mind for quarantining of all West African entrants to USA or better restrict travel of West Africans (3 countires0 to USA and provide an “air bridge” to bring in USA HCWs. Also, he was concerned that with the latest proposal for 32 additional Ebola-ready hospitals in the USA that we should quarantine the USA HCWs after seeing Ebola patients. He was OK with just direct, active monitoring of the NIH, Emory and Nebraska HCWs, but he felt that since the other 32 hospitals were less trained and so would likely have a greater chance of getting infected, then they should be quarantined since (as a former Clinical Psychologist) he feels that people deny sxs and so he does not trust them. He is against the part of the $6.18 billion supplemental request for Ebola on the grounds that we do not needs all the additional hospitals (I actually do not entirely disagree with him as I have expressed to our own people). The meeting ended cordially.