( CNN ) -- At a press conference in Dallas earlier this month , I listened as a hospital administrator made the now infamous revelation that a feverish man was allowed to go home from the emergency room even though he 'd recently been in Liberia . That man , of course , turned out to be Thomas Eric Duncan , who died the next week of Ebola . Reporters looked at each other and gasped in surprise . How could they have let Duncan go home ? Not me . I thought , `` It 's happened again . ''
Communication errors in general can be deadly . The mistake in 2014 received a lot of attention because Ebola was spreading . Similar , less high - profile mistakes , happen again and again , Cohen says .