Diary Prequel Package — page 384

ria, correctly; you are not at risk of infection.". I was horrified to hear this. Now comes the revelation. Cliff Lane and I stop off at Chris Grady's office on 1st floor of the Clinical Center, now late at night and I tell Chris the story about the CDC person. While Cliff and I are talking, Chris pulls up the CDC website and to my amazement she reads what its guidelines are for PPE. It is exactly what said she was wearing including the fact that it resulted in open skin. And so the CDC recommendations are much less stringent than the MSF and the NIH PPEs. In other words, the CDC guideliens are in fact inadequate and was following them when she likely got infected. I got goosebumps. I was incorrectly assuming that the CDC guidelines were like the NIH strict PPEs. In fact they are not. That night I e-mail Tom Frieden to call me and I explain the situation and he says that his people tell him that if you follow the guidelines even with that PPE protocol, the experience in Africa says that you are protected unless you break protocol. He then says that we really cannot tell exactly how and when got infected. We could not distinguish between the first 2 days and the days after they went to more stringent protocols. I went ballistic over the phone. I begged him to please not listen to his staff. I told him frankly as a friend and as someone who care about him that his staff "had no fucking idea of what they were talking about since none of them who are advising him have ever taken care of a patient, or if they have it was 10 years ago". I pleaderd with him not to say that the nurses must have had a breach of protocol and to realize that the CDC protocol was entirely inadequate for a tertiary hospital intensive care setting which is where got infected. I told him that common sense tells you that open skin is much more dangerous than full PPE and that it is essential to change the CDC recommended PPE to insist on no open skin. He agreed somewhat reluctantly and said he would have to check with his staff. I told him that I love him, but I really do not give a shit what his staff says, he must change the protocol. In fact, within the next couple of days with help from me and Cliff and others, the CDC did change the protocol. Oct. 21, 2014 - Jey Johnson, Secertary of DHS, announces that all flights from Liberia, Sierra leone and Guinea must now enter the USA at one of the 5 designated airports (O'Hare, Newark, IAD, JFK and Atlanta) that are now having entry screening. CDC issues the new PPE guidelines emphasizing the 3 principles that I have insisted upon during my many discussions with CDC (Frieden): 1) Training and drilling in procedure of donning/doffing; 2) no exposed skin anywhere; 3) trained monitors for donning and especially a WATSAN for doffing. Did Weill Cornell Grand Rounds by video to an SRO audience. Also, the White House now wants me to instruct physicians around the country on Ebola via White House run teleconferences. Now I am a press coach. Did one today and now they want me to do one tomorrow or next day. On the call were Rich Carmona, Zeke