Interview With Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings
BLITZER: Giving the Pentagon to call up reservists to deploy to West Africa, if necessary. Up to 4,000 U.S. troops may be sent there to set up facilities for health care workers and other details. In an exclusive interview with CNN's Kyra Phillips, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Martin Dempsey, talked about his own Ebola fears.</s>KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: Are you, General Dempsey, worried about Ebola here in the U.S.?</s>GEN. MARTIN DEMPSEY, JOINT CHIEFS OF STAFF CHAIRMAN: I have been worried about Ebola globally for about 90 days, and I have had some on my staff that were probably a little more worried than I was even a few weeks or months before that.</s>PHILLIPS: Why?</s>DEMPSEY: I'm worried about it because we know so little about it. You will hear different people describe whether it could become airborne. If you bring two -- you know, two doctors who happen have that specialty into a room, one will say, no, there's no way it will ever become airborne, but it could mutate so it would be harder to discover. It actually disguises itself in the body, which is what makes it so dangerous and has that incubation period of about 21 days. Another doctor will say, well, if it continues to mutate at the rate it's mutating, and if we go from 20,000 infected to 100,000, the population might allow it the opportunity to mutate and become airborne. And then it will be an extraordinarily serious problem. I don't know who is right. I don't want to take that chance. So, I'm taking it very seriously.</s>BLITZER: Let's bring back our guests, Dr. Gavin Macgregor- Skinner, an assistant professor at Penn State University's Department of Public Health Sciences. He's an expert on public health preparedness. Also joining us, the tropical medicine specialist, our CNN medical analyst Dr. Xand van Tulleken. How worried should we be, Dr. van Tulleken, about this virus evolving, if you will, and becoming airborne contagious as opposed strictly by bodily fluids?</s>VAN TULLEKEN: Well, I think the general's right that we don't really know. But it does seem like there has been no virus in the history of the study of virology that has ever changed its mode of transmission and gone from being transmitted from bodily fluids to becoming airborne. That said, what I really like about what General Dempsey is saying is he is not taking any risks. He's a man who wants to attack the possibility of there being an airborne disease before it happens. I think what is very reasonable to say is, even if you don't think there's any chance of Ebola getting airborne at all, it's definitely true that within our own lifetime we're going to see pandemics of airborne diseases. We have seen them with -- we have seen them with other kinds of flu. And So I think having a system in place that can cope with airborne disease will definitely strengthen our ability to approach Ebola.</s>BLITZER: What is your analysis, Dr. Macgregor-Skinner, on this specific question?</s>MACGREGOR-SKINNER: Wolf, right now, this is a public health emergency. We need to evaluate our capabilities and we need to develop operational plans. At the moment, it's not airborne. We can start developing operational plans in case it does become airborne. But I'm not even seeing operational plans that have been developed right now. We don't have a national communications strategy. We don't have a national a training program. We have a CDC that is handing out guidance and recommendation documents as paper-based documents. We don't no video, we aren't using Web-based training, we aren't using lessons learned from Dallas and Nebraska and Emory. So again, we're not being able to manage the situation. We can't do the implementation, and again we have no coordination.</s>BLITZER: All right, Dr. Macgregor-Skinner, please stand by. Dr. van Tulleken, I want you to stand by as well. Joining me now is the mayor of Dallas, Mike Rawlings. Mayor, thanks very much for joining us. A lot of people are wondering, Amber Vinson, this 29-year-old nurse, she got on this flight and she flew out of Dallas, went to Cleveland, came back, even though she had an elevated fever. What happened here?</s>MIKE RAWLINGS, MAYOR OF DALLAS, TEXAS: Well, I don't know. I'm asking a lot of questions today. There's no way she should have been on that flight. She was being monitored here in Dallas, and if she was monitored correctly, she would have gotten into the hospital, I think, earlier than going on that flight.</s>BLITZER: Should everyone who got into contact, especially health care workers, and there are about 70 of them at the Dallas hospital who were in some sort of contact with Mr. Duncan, should all of them be under strict quarantine right now, as opposed to sort of personal responsibility, not moving around?</s>RAWLINGS: I don't know if all 70 should, but I think a group of individuals should be in some sort of isolation, away for their families, being close to the medical facilities. That's what I have asked for from the state. That's what I'm asking from the CDC to examine that. This is, as you know, a serious issue that we're taking very seriously. There's no way you can get this disease unless you come in contact with an individual. But we want to make sure that we are nipping this now with those health care workers.</s>BLITZER: What have you been told, Mayor, about Amber Vinson's, the second nurse, about her condition?</s>RAWLINGS: That she's doing OK, but she was a little more progressed than Ms. Pham, and we are just hoping -- these folks are heroes. They are heroes for us, and we're going to do everything we can for their support.</s>BLITZER: As of this moment, Mayor, have you been told that there are other Ebola cases potentially out there?</s>RAWLINGS: Well, look, I believe that there's a chance that we're going to get another one. I'm not happy about that. I'm not happy about the one we got today. We have all got to do a better job, and this city expects more of its officials and its government. And we're going to work hard to even if we get somebody else that we're going to close this down sooner vs. later.</s>BLITZER: Is there somebody else who is already being tested potentially? We hope that no one else comes down with Ebola, but is there someone who is suspicious at this point?</s>RAWLINGS: Not at this point, but the state is always looking at different individuals and assessing those things. So it wouldn't surprise me if I got another call at 1:00 in the morning, like I did this last morning, and say we have got another case. We have got to be prepared for that. And that's why we have to have a sense of urgency about everything we do. And that's why we have got to stick to a very clear process and discipline, an operational way to deal with this in the city of Dallas.</s>BLITZER: Do you know, Mayor, have you been told how Nina Pham and Amber Vinson, these two nurses, one 26 years old, one 29 years old, contracted Ebola?</s>RAWLINGS: I have not. And we will find out at some point, but -- or we may not. It may be so difficult to find out, it may never come. The key is what we're doing going forward today. We believe protocol is different right now at Presbyterian Hospital than it was before. But this isn't just about Presbyterian Hospital. This is about everybody on the team, and them doing their part in that.</s>BLITZER: What does it say to you, Mayor, that this woman, Amber Vinson, was airlifted today? She's on a jet right now flying from Dallas to Atlanta. What does it say about the vote of confidence, shall we say, about what's going on at that Dallas hospital?</s>RAWLINGS: I think it's the right decision. I really do. This is one of the decisions that I asked for, and I'm so pleased that folks decided to do this. It allows Presbyterian to breathe a little bit. It allows us to start to deal with those hospital workers that are part of the family. It's probably the best thing for Ms. -- for this patient, and at some point, maybe Ms. Pham moves as well. We're trying to figure that out. We have got to deal with all the resources. We can't be parochial about this. If there's a better solution, we need to take it.</s>BLITZER: So, you think there's a possibility Nina Pham also will be airlifted?</s>RAWLINGS: There's a possibility of that. And that's something that we're discussing and we will see if it happens.</s>BLITZER: Let me read to you a statement put out by the National Nurses United Union. It's a pretty tough statement. The suits they were given, -- we're talking about the healthcare professionals, the nurses -- still exposed their necks, the part closest to their face and mouth. Nurses had to use medical tape that in not impermeable and has permeable seams to wrap around their necks in order to protect themselves and had to put on the tape and take it off on their own. That sounds awful to me. What was going on? I know you've looked into this, Mayor, because that sounds so, so elementary, shall we say, and so dangerous.</s>RAWLINGS: You know, what's amazing about this is we were kind of fighting a two-front war on this. The context of Eric Duncan and outside of the hospital, we thought that was going to be the more difficult one, 48 contacts. We've tracked them all. We've got their family in isolation, and knock on wood, they're doing very well. I thought the layup was really inside the hospital, and so it's very disappointing what has happened. Again, we're going to -- we'll do a postmortem on this and understand exactly why different people did different things, but you would hope that, as a medical community in the nation, we would do better by these patients. But they are -- but these are the ladies that are -- that helped for Mr. Duncan, so it's not their fault, and I'm cheering them on.</s>BLITZER: Mayor, good luck to you; good luck to everyone in Dallas. This is obviously a story that's resonating an enormous amount of fear out there, not only in your community; all over the country, indeed all over the world. Mike Rawlings is the mayor of Dallas, Texas. Mayor, thank you very much.</s>RAWLINGS: Thank you.</s>BLITZER: Just ahead, as CNN journalists explore their roots, you're about to see my own very emotional journey to trace my family's history.</s>BLITZER: I feel like I've been robbed of an experience of having grandparents. Six million Jews were killed during the Holocaust.