my wife turned 50, so we did a sound of music themed event, and we had on leader is in -- lederh osen. >> and there is always the good stuff in the last five minutes. right, penultimate question. you are a big tennis player. give us one tennis tip. >> it is a full body swaying. it is not just your arm. strength is key. >> and last question. you eat a lot of burgers. why are you a birder -- burger addict? >> i don't know. they are easy to eat. you can go pretty much anywhere in the world and get a decent burger. india may not be the best place. [laughter] >> cheese or no cheese? where?

>> i know all of the ones in seattle, and there is one there called, but burger king, those are pretty good. you cannot grow up better than that. sure whatw, i am not to say except thank you very much. this has been a terrific and wide ranging conversation. thank you very much. i am especially grateful to bank of america, our partner on this, and to all of you for coming out to inaugurate this new series. and you can come to our website at politico >> the centers for disease control will hold a briefing sunday to provide an update into the investigation into the first ebola case diagnosed in the u.s. expected to begin at noon eastern and we'll have live coverage here on c-span.

>> on newsmakers, kansas senator jerry moran talks about the 2014 election landscaper running nation including the campaign of pat roberts in kansas. >> here's somebody who's been around. he's viewed as somebody who doesn't spend enough time in the state by many measures, isn't that his biggest problem in the race? >> i don't think so. i would say that the primary campaign, one of the slogans that was repeated time and time again was that senator roberts isn't a kansas an. what that is a representation of, it has the ability to be a campaign slogan. look at their voting record. that's what kansans will ultimately see it, how does pat

roberts vote with the united states senate. they will find time and time again the way that kansans would want him to. it's a false issue. i understand it has political -- now when it comes down to the general election, do you want somebody who know how they're going to vote who has voted many times ago in support that the vast majority kansans hold or do you want somebody who support obamacare and for greater gun control. i think there's a stark difference here. somebody that we know, versus somebody that would be a significant risk and the risk would be in the direction of things that most kansans would find objectionable. >> kansas senator jerry moran on news makers sunday at 10:00 a.m. and 6:00 p.m. eastern on c-span.

next, more on the ebola outbreak with the look at the u.s. response at home and abroad. after that a forum on what the u.s. is doing to prevent more cyberattacks. jayson son -- jay johnson will talk about border and terrorism. from today's "wall street journal," this is about an hour. >> we're joined now by dr. macgregor-skinner. he is a infectious disease expert with theringering foundation. i want to know some of your other history. you recently returned from nigeria where you were actually treating patients on the ground with ebola.

you also worked in helping prevent disease after the 2004 tsunami. you have an extensive background here in dealing with these outbreaks. i'd like to get your thoughts off the bat about some of the latest headlines we've heard out of the ebola outbreak. the dallas officials have -- people wn to 10 who might have been infected with ebola. the death toll worldwide is now over 3,300. are we handling this epidemic in the right way? >> that's a very good question. we have within the us health care system a wonderful trained .ealth care staff we have the staff in place. what we really have at the moment is a hub type approach to

controlling ebola. the c.d.c. is in the center and then we have all the health care systems, whether it be the hospitals, the urgent health care, the travel clinics. we haven't created a functional network and that's what we need to create. we need to be able to share experiences. we've had emor yy hospital in atlanta. 've had the nebraska medical center. they're our champion champions at the moment. it requires good management to treat ebola patients. every day you are faced with new challenges. we're not hearing the challenges emorry or cing nebraska. we're not hearing tomorrow this will happen -- we're not sharing our experiences. >> there's a lack of commune

between the hospitals that are dealing with the disease? >> there is a need for much better communication and there is a need for team work. we aren't working as a team. at penn state university i teach ealth prepareness -- prepreparedness. i teach graduate students. i tell them we have a wonder tfl have acy where we creativity and innovation, but when it comes down to diseases, you have to get the whole teaming to. >> i think there's a lot of confusion and misperception around exactly how ebola is spread. can you break it down for us how this disease travels from one person to another, what should should we be concerned about. >> it's real important because we heard the c.d.c. director, we've heard from several experts

it's real -- have said it's really hard to get the disease. it's true. having dealt personally with ebola patients how do i feel? i'm scared. the people in my team are scared. we all work together to try to encourage and give each other confidence. we put on the proper protection, the suits the gloves, the face shields. we know that the virus is in the bodily fluids. we talk about bodily fluids and i have my two children in middle school going, dad, what is a bodily fluid? we have saliva, blood. we know that people that have ebola, they vomit. they're sick. there's virus in the voment vomit. a patient who has ebola has to go to the toilet. when they go to the toilet there is vomit. when they have urine and feces and diarrhea.

as they get worse and worse and worse there's more virus and we start to see the virus in the sweat. the either thing we haven't talked about is semen. there's also virus in the semen and there's also virus in breast milk and we haven't talked about that. and so at the early stages of the disease we have vomit and we have viruses in all these bodily fluids, you have to touch those bodily fluids. it doesn't go through the skin. it has tsh you have to put your hands in your mouth, your nose, your eyes. we do fun things at home with my family. how many times do you touch your nace a day? and it's a lot. people are out there in universities looking at people, how many time dozz we touch our face, it's a lot throughout the day. as we work with nurses and doctors and physicians and other

specialists, don't touch your face. so when i do training in a hospital and i teach them the hospital infection control precautions, i told them don't raise your hands above your shoulders. that's really hard to do. >> how much of the virus does it take to get infected? i mean again, just touching your eye after perhaps touching other bodily fluid in someone else could be enough. >> when we look at the blood in your body, we take a blood sample, there's billions of viruses. when someone with ebola vomits, there's billions of virus on the ground. how much do we need? probably one. not very much at all. so again, when you're working with ebola virus, you have to get it 100% correct every time. >> how long does the virus stay active once it's outside of the body? >> it really depends on the

surface that it's on. i want to emphasize right now it's not days. so this virus dies. it's killed when it's on dry surfaces. it may get on to a surface and it may only last up to 30 minutes. it may get on to other porous surfaces and it may last one to two -- the evidence we have, the research and the samples we've taken in hospitals, over a 24-hour period if it's outside of the body the vie vuss dead and it's not contagious and therefore it can't be committed. it's not days, it's more like hours. >> we want to hear your thoughts on this outbreak and the u.s. response to it and field your questions for dr. macgregor-skinner. line.n call us on the independents can call 202-585-3

82 -- find us on twitter, facebook or send us an email at journal at c-span.org. earlier this week the director of the national institute of health was here on "the wall street journal" to talk about her work developing a vaccine for ebola. >> the vackzeens are moving forward at an unprecedented rate and i might say this is an effort we started 13 years ago anticipate thrg might be a need for a vaccine. ebola has been around since 1976. this is the fifth generation ebola vaccine. it looks very good in the animal models where it seems to be pleatly protected. of course you don't know until you try this out in human patients whether it's going to be safe and whether it will work. we didn't start just three -- we did start three weeks ago with a

phase one trial. so far all is going well. no red flags to indicate there's a problem with the vackzeen. it will take now a couple of months to see whether those individuals mount an immune response that you would think would be protected against acquiring the disease. if the data looks promising then we need to move quickly to get this into a phase 2 trial in west africa in individuals who are at risk. all all of that is very complicated in a circumstance where there's a great deal of stress as you can imagine on the health care system. we're determined to figure out a way to do that. >> what's the timeline, dr. collins? what are you looking at? >> again, it will be november before we have the evidence about whether the vaccine is looking promising in this phase one trial. if it looks good, then shortly after that and the meeting is going on actual think today and

almost every day exactly how to do the design, we will try to set up this more extensive trial in west africa to determine whether the vaccine is actually effective or not >> that was dr. francis collins from the national institute of health talking about the agency's work in developing a vaccine for ebola. dr. macgregor-skinner, what is your take on how close we are to actually finding a cure prevention? >> i'm not directly involved in the vaccine research. we know that's a bill dollar industry out there. it's out there for diseases that are really common. you have to take it from a business perspective, are those pharmaceutical companies as well government, are they in the business to make money or to save lives at the moment? that's really important. we've heard this is a fifth generation vaccine. i've been involved in vaccine for inflewensa, the bird flu and some of those vaccines looked

promising, others failed. at the moment the treatments, the vaccine we had, we're at the modeling stage. we haven't started all of the trials we need to do. it's real important that we practice evidence based medicine. we don't risk people's lives with the unknown. until we have the data that our experts in this country have analyzed we have to be really careful about what we're saying about the future of a vaccine. if we can -- we may not have another ebola outbreak for years. >> we will turn now to your phone calls. we will start with paul from florida on the republican line. paul gorks ahead. caller: good morning. i've done some serious work.

i think we're way underestimating the true danger to the public. if you were to take number one and double it 30 times you'd have some idea how quickly one becomes millions. ny doubling of that system could spread like wildfire. i think that's the basic truth that's being held back. >> very good question. i was talking to my daughter in middle school. we were talking about this last night and she said, dad, would you like bhe to give you a million dollars or pay you a penny that doubles every day for 30 days? and it's just like we were talking in the context of ebola. we do know -- we do have the resources, we do have the tools in the toolbox here. what we need to do is improve the communication, the awareness. we're very careful in this country and this is working to ur debtment -- detriment, we

tpwheed to identify where the hospitals who are ready. again, there's two ways -- two things we need to focus on here is early detection and if we get the early detection and we get the resources for contact tracing, we know from previous experiences with ebola that we're going to beat this disease. >> next up is robin from pennsylvania on the democratic line. caller: yes, thank you for taking my call. a am very worried about what is .oing on here with this ebola >> turn down your tv, you're on the air. caller: i'm worried about what happened already with the case that happened in texas. i don't think we're ready for this. the hospitals dropped the ball

and what if this happens in other hospitals and they're lying coming over here from africa and liberia? >> that's a really good question, robin. i share similar concerns. i think we have to be very careful within the u.s. health care system and all the different processes we have. i can tell you the differences -- i teach emergency management, we teach a whole community approach. it's really important when we highly isaster or a infectious disease, we need everyone in the community to be involved and to be equal shareholders. what's important is we need to look at the tools in the toolboxes, the resources we have and how we can improve our communication. i don't expect every nurse, every physician, every hospital worker in the country to be an a grade student when it comes to geography. they don't need to know where liberia or guinea or sierra

leone is. what we need to put in our medical records which is what we used in dallas, we think it was a failure in our electronic medical records system. --now when i talk to my i.d. i.t. people -- what happened to old fashion communication between nurses and doctors? don't blame that nurse. don't put her on the fire. she is a nurse in the emergency department. she has a thousand things going on in her head. she's really busy. she's stressed every day. we've been there. let's facilitate the system. where is the signs up at the front of the hospital saying if you just recently just traveled, call this number or don't come into the hospital and we'll come to you. we haven't done that yet. >> so there has been to that point some talk about exactly where do we start to catch potential infections or

potential fokeses who may be contagious in. in the financial times there was some y today that says -- of those who are joining this push are bobby kindal, the republican governor of louisiana, calling the administration to shut down flights of countries inflicted y ebola. ted cruz, a republican from texas attacked the white house unclear approach and calls for airports to take every precaution. meanwhile you have a senator from texas writing to u.s. , we ms and border patrol request additional information for screening process for incoming passengers to the u.s. after the confirmed case in

dallas. what are we doing in terms ever airport screening and is it enough? >> i recently came back from nigeria. when i was in nigeria, i went through two airports. there were nurses at those airports. they took my temperature. they made me fill out a form and they interviewed me twice. i then flew through germany. as i got off the plane, there was nurses before we even got into the airport. there was nurses in the gangway, everyone line up here. we filled out forms and got interviewed. i then got on a plane from germany to washington, d.c. and there's nothing at the airport. now, we have the resources, we have the people, we have the skills, we have the training. no one gave me -- there was no one taking my temperature, no one asking me questions. i didn't fill out a form. there's no dat paw base. there's no history of me traveling from nigeria after having worked with ebola

patients and stating that to immigration officers. i don't blame them. but what i do i blame the system at the moment. there's nothing handed out saying if you get sick, ring this number. >> is that an argument for a full ban on flights to and from or just an argument for better screening process? >> well, i think we need a better screening process. i think we need a better follow up in our contact tracing. i'm seeing universities around the countries have already taken the initiative. i do want to talk about the flights. a plane has two levels, you have the passengers at the top and the cargo at the bottom. i have a lot of friends working in west africa now risking their lives on ebola. they're relying on mid sins, equipment. people -- there's a security issue there. you ban the plane, my friends will suffer. infectious diseases, we don't

isolate countries. we isolate the virus and that's what we need to be focusing on. >> next up is a caller from virginia on the independent line. caller: yes, i think at the first earlier callers who were concerned about the spread to the united states are similarly correctly pointing to what may be a real problem for c.d.c. because within the last two or three weeks that they have commented in medical journals that this outbreak could go over a million people. even if it goes up to 50 or 60,000, it's very hard to believe that it will not spread to other countries in west africa. lived over there for many years at different times over the last 40 years and their

airports are not as secure. that may be the case in nigeria but these people could show up in other places and come into the united states. i think you very accurately pointed to a problem that we have here as people come into our our airports and that problem should be addressed immediately. the c.d.c. really has a problem because if this happens again, the public here will become hysterical. that's my belief. thank you so much. >> i think you're making a really good point. you mentioneded the c.d.c. i used to work there as a disease detectivive. we're called the epidemic intelligence officers. we investigated the outbreak of any disease. what i'm really concerned about teach public health preparedness and emergency

management. we have the best emergency management in the world. we go around the world teaching saster management, emergency management. what we need at the moment in the u.s., look at the command system which was designed. it is a great system for managing any disaster. it's not just putting the c.d.c. in the center. it's bringing all the other aspects within the government that can help us. hat will include homeland home security and department of transport and we need good managers, people who can do good good coordination, good collaboration, good communication and let the c.d.c. do what they do. but don't put the added pressure of them having to manage the whole event. at the moment we need management for the events. >> john from north carolina

writes about the 21-day screening period. >> it sounds like someone leaning on a counter or an mergency room after an ebola patient's sweat is there for a half-hour is that a risk? >> bodily fluids on the ground if they're wet the virus is still alive. what kills the virus is dry conditions. but we don't -- in hospitals we don't rely on that. we have to decon tam nate. we use -- decontaminate. we use disinfect ant. we went down to the supermarket. we bought bleach. we took that bleach. that bleach is any -- we had to teach the nurses and the hospital staff how to take the supermarket bleach and dilute it

wn to a much lower concentration which we knows kills the virus 100% but doesn't cause everything to corrode and it's not dangerous. we're talking about occupational health here. it's not dangerous to the person. so any bodily fluids that are spilled need to be cleaned up. that's what you have to do. if we talk about screening at airports, there are a number of critical mission functions to detect, prevent and stop the ebola from spreading. now, i know when i travel from nigeria it was a 30-hour trip. when i left nigeria i was fine. when i went through germany, i was fine. but my flight from germany to the u.s., anything could have happened. when i went through the airport i left and i didn't know what i was going to do. even though i worked with ebola, in the next 21 days i'm going to . t myself under observation

>> this brings up another point i understand ebola is only contagious when someone is showing symptoms, not necessarily when they're in that incubation period is that correct? >> that's right. we need to create awareness and education. as you leave the airport, you just come back from a country in west africa -- i'd like to point out -- i'll go back to my children. dad, when you diagnose something, just google it. we were talking about the poison emergency number in this country. you google poise emergency number you get 18002222222. i said to my children let's google emergency ebola number, what comes up? nothing. >> not even on google. >> we're giving you something if you get sick, stay home, don't come to our hospitals.

>> the white house held a briefing yesterday on the government's effort to contain nd control the ebola outbreak. homeland security advisor and white house security had this to say about the possibility of travel ban. >> i know that has been an issue that has been raised. i take note of the doctor's comments in this regard which is to say that right now we believe those types of steps actually impede the response. they impede and slow down the ability of the united states and other international partners to actually get expertise and capabilities and equipment into the affected areas. and we said, the most important and effective thing we can do is to control the epidemic at its source. we want to be able to ensure we're getting the assistance and expertise and we are the --

getting the providers into the affected regions. >> that was -- we will turn back to our phone lines now. we are going to hear from richard in florida on the republican line. caller: good morning. thank you for taking my call. my question is -- my questions are, people that are in the infected areas in ask, it seems like probably i would do the same as people become desperate and they know they're going to die and they want to try to make it to the u.s. because of all the great medical procedures and -- what is the -- before the fever actually -- i mean how long is the virus in the body before people notice they have a fever? and also insects like flies and things like that, can it be

spread through flies, fruit? it seems -- i think we should really act on the side of caution for maybe a couple of months or so to get a handle on it. -- through irport air-conditioning vents, like in airplanes they have a return air that comes out the supply and , vapors and at things like that -- >> rip ard, we got your question. >> you raised two really important points. let's talk about when you talked about west africa. we're seeing a lot of social mobilization. we are seeing a lot of community resilience and community involvement in west africa because they know the community

has to work together to beat ebola. it's not just the doctors, it's the nurses, it's everyone. i spent a lot of time with church leaders in nigeria. how do we bring in faith and prayer as well as ensuring that no one gets ebola. and again, we sat down -- i sat down with the nurses and said well if you're going to pray and be close to an ebola patient, we need you to wear gloves and you need to come out and we will disinfect you with bleach. we're not going to stop your faith but we are going to bring medicine into this. you mentioned about the spread and transmission. again, we know that before and as it's been mentioned by the director of the c.d.c. and many other experts, unless you have linical symptoms -- a real key clinical symptom is sudden onset of fever. prior to that it's in your body.

when you start developing those clinical symptoms, then we know it gets into your saliva, it gets into your body what we call again the bodily fluids, the vomit, the die reara. when i saw in the patients, they came in with fever, body aches and they didn't feel really well. that could be a number of diseases. in west africa it looks like malaria. we actually have to say you don't have ebola. it's not saying you do have ebola, we have to rule out you don't have ebola. we need to take that same approach in the u.s. we're getting very close to flu season. a lot of people are going to come in with fever and body ache . >> next up is james from georgia on the democratic line. go ahead. caller: how are you doing? i have a two-fold question in regards to the aspect of the

hysteria that actually involves with some of the wrong both republicans -- what i've been seeing is there has been a lot of hysteria and misinformation. how do you propose to deal with the misinformation? -- i've developed a system that communicates over afive million people in the minority community. things like the high tech act, do you think that now we have it in place, do you think that will actually help with the electronic medical records and the big push we've been trying to do? i think it's necessary to be able to help the health care system.

how do you think that will affect the ebola breakout? >> again, communication, education, awareness is the key. do we have in this country set up the ebola classroom online? no we don't. again, we have a lot of organizations putting out q and a's. we have again the c.d.c. and other government agencies stributing paper based guidance, protocols and procedures. that means someone has to go on the internet, download the document, read the document, ensure they understand the document and then translate and teach and tell that information to other members of their staff within the hospital. i'm not -- when we did this back in 2004, we had a virus called sars, one of the things we used was a lot of videos. we know that -- my students at

penn state, i can give them a document and they can read the document and then i test them,. i can get them to watch a video and they do better in the test after they watch the videos. we can make videos. that should be up there. we've got resources all over the place, whether it's an ebola classroom or youtube. we talk about medical records here in this country, we know we have to prevent -- we have to be really cognizant of the privacy of the patient. we also know that the medical records can work in our favor. i carry a cell phone. i do so much of my work on a cell phone. compliant aa platform on this cell phone that i can talk to hospitals in privacy, it's encrypted and no one can hack into this and i can have confidential conversations on my cell phone 24 hours, seven days a week and we can talk

about patient care. we know within our electronic medical records we need to improve our communications between nurses and physicians. we also know we can reprogram a lot of our medical records if e patient says i have just come back from a country in west africa. flash it up on the scene. this is a warning. it doesn't register when you're so busy and so stressed in a hospital situation. >> we have a coloneler from connecticut -- we have a caller from connecticut -- then we will move to carol from florence, south carolina on the republican line. carol are you there? caller: we yes i am >> what's your question? caller: first, i would like to thank the doctor for saying something about faith and prayer in a positive way. i am very concerned.

i've been an r.n. for 51 years. given the colossal failures and incompetence of obama's appointees and his judgment and lies, i cannot trust anything. i certainly do not trust the c.d.c.. look at what happened with mr. duncan. his family was left for days with his bodily fluids in that apartment. they only decontaminated this yesterday. they did not -- have hazmat stuff on which they should have because these people have truly been exposed to vomit and other bodily fluids. secondly, being a nurse and a director of nurses for many, many years, i know what goes on with hand washing, infection

control. people not using gloves with needle. people not using gloves when drawing blood, starting i.v.'s. this is dangerous. you're not going to be able to educate people in a month on how to do that. the other thing, obama says that we have a very low chance of getting the ebola in the united states of america. however, in this one week we have four all regions of the country who may be affected. i say stop the flights. now, you people are saying that you have to isolate the virus in these countries. let's be realistic. you don't have the resources to do that. as far as giving things that are necessary for care, for education, for the special hospitalized beds, you have the ability to get special military flights in or ships like you did

with the tsunami in japan. there are ways of doing this without going through the airport. the gentleman -- the doctor who came through i think it was reagan national with a hazmat suit on was not even questioned in the united states of america coming from africa as to why he was dressed like that. they did no screening at all. >> all right, that's carol from south carolina. >> thank you, carol. you raised a number of really important points here. begin, a lot of people traveled all around the world to come to the u.s. health care system to get the best treatment they can. i know from working in hospitals over time, we have people traveling coming from many, many countries, including from west africa. pregnant mothers come to this country because their babies are going to survive if they're born here compared to what they have.

you can't blame the limited resources we have in west african countries. there's people coming here all the time so we have to put in these systems. there's systems in place which we do have to ensure people that are traveling back here are screened and under observation and they know where to report. you talked about the team approach and what happened in dallas and how things were delayed and slowed. we need to put together everyone -- disasters happen locally, at the local level, put together the team that's required, include the emergency managers and all the different stakeholders and critical mission elements of the community that's going to require the hazmat, the decontamination, the transportation, the disposal, all that extra waste management, that's got to come together. you talked about nurses and gloves. when we work in a hospital we wear lots of gloves and we take those gloves all really quickly and we put the new gloves on really quickly.

when you come out from an ebola patient you have to believe you're exposed and we have to work in a different way. what we teach in hospitals is you work in a buddy system. we sit there and i'll watch you as you take your gloves and all your personal protective equipment and if you make a mistake i'm going to tell you and we make sure and decontaminate the areas. that requires extra training which we need to do now. you also talked about the family of the patient in dallas. they are not criminals. you can't take a highly infectious disease and when people are ininfected, they're not sick, they just happen to have very close contact with someone they love dearly who's in a hospital and could die with the ebola virus. let's not still -- stigmatize

the patient, the community or the family -- this is like other diseases where we provide reliable, effective everyday based counseling services. they're a team player and they need to be on the team and i don't see them at the moment >> doctor whorks should bear the responsibility? should institutions rebear the responsibility for the fact that united states seemed to be unprepared for the extent of this outbreak? >> there have been errors and mistakes made and lessons learned. we are using those lessons to make sure it doesn't happen. we haven't used all of our resources and tools in our toolbox. we haven't made it easy for ourselves. you still have to go on to a website and download the guidelines and read it. we aren't even sharing the lessons from the hospital who have successfully 100% treated

the patients. they're our heroes at the moment. we're not talking about the whole system within the hospital of people who have to provide food of the ebola patients and wash up the cups, the plates and the yew ten sills -- yew continue sills. -- utahen ills. -- utensils. let's take the whole community approach in the hospital and in our neighborhood and our community. >> a couple of questions now that were received over email. two of them are related. is regular hand soap effective in preventing the infection of the virus and how long should you wash your hands for? and also joanne writes what is the original source of this virus? where did it come from >> the first one was from lynn? >> lynn. >> lynn, washing your hands with soap. we're talking infectious diseases here. any infectious disease, any communicable disease that can go

from person to person, washing your hands with soap is so, so important. so again, we need to be teaching this in our schools. we immediate to be ensuring the people washing with soap. had i was in nigeria, we 116 people when we arrived and we listened to all their concerns and problems. we said this is what needs to be done. an insurance company of all companies said we can pay for the public service announcements. what would you like us to say? tell people to wash their hands with soap. and the insurance company said, yeah, we can do that. who would have thought an insurance company would have a role in fighting ebola? >> how long in do you sing the happy birthday song? >> yes, 20 to 30 seconds. everyone i watch washes their hands very wickly.

-- quickly. 20 seconds is not a long time out of your day. but it's constant washing with soap and water is really important. >> the original source of the virus, where did this emerge from? >> what makes this ebola outbreak so unique, so special, so important? it's in a location where we haven't had ebola before. we've never had it in west africa, that's really significant. there are five strains of ebola. the strain that we have now is a strain that is the worst one. it comes from wild animals. we believe it lives in bats. we have experiments and tests and samples taken from other animals. it's that animal, interaction health. we try to look at the diseases

animals have and the diseases human haves. we call that -- we know it's transmitted through animals and that probably started back in africa in 2013. >> next is mark on the democratic line. >> dr. skinner thank you for coming on this program. it's a very informed program. i'm a veterinarian that has been practicing for many years. i deal with viruss. have a specific question. it's not a hard stretch of the imagination to determine how the gentleman that's hospitalized in texas now could have been picked up the virus when transporting the very sick woman. but i'm worried about the cameraman that was with nbc for

two days who had lived in the area for two years who was informed on this whole outbreak nd he must have knowingly knew as much or -- as we do as far as the potential of contracting it how out. blue he picked it up. now when the medical people from nbc -- they say he wasn't working for us long enough for us to make an educated thing of how he got it but that bothers me. >> that's true. i agree with you. it's really hard to get a good history from any patient with any disease. we don't really know what his direct contact was. you have to have that direct contact -- you have to have that direct contact with the patient or a virus. think about a cameraman, he's

carrying all the equipment. he's hot, he's sweaty, he's fatigued. he might have put the camera down numerous times. he had to have done something where he has taken the virus, he put his hand in his mouth, he put his hand on his eyes or nose and it transferred to those mucus membranes. it's not going to come through the skin. i don't know he had any open wounds. i haven't heard that. that's probably the only reasonable way. what did he do when he wasn't working? i don't know. >> you mentioned several times that you recently came from nigeria and treated ebola patients there. that country has been able to contain the outbreak of the virus there whereas other countries as you mentioned are having a much more difficult time. what is unique about what nigeria did and what can other countries, including the u.s., learn from it? >> nigeria had a plan on paper.

the nigerian invited my team from the elizabeth r. griffin research foundation and paid for us to work with their plan and make it work. what was unique about the nigerian plan, it was a whole community approach. it was about social mobilization. it was saying don't talk about the about things of ebola. talk about the good and positive things we could do to protect people in neighborhoods and communities from ebola. they brought everyone in. i had the church leaders, i had the army, the navy, the air force, the airport authority, the port authority. i'm sitting in a room and i'm saying where do you work? well, i'm with the funeral services. wow, they inviteded you guys here. because if an ebola patient dies you have to teach us what to do. they're in the room. and so suddenly we're talking to so many different people and hey've got everyone on evidence-based guidelines. they didn't change those

guidelines. once we taught something, we kept everything standardized and we reinforced it. the hospital health care staff has the basic skills. we had to strengthen those skills. they picked people within the community that were leaders, decision makers to tell what to do and people listened to them. they selected celebrities. have a soccer player or have a pop singer tell the story and people listen to them. that's really important. >> from is it the augustine florida, donald is calling on an nt independent line. whars yu question? caller: do you hear me ok? >> we can hear you. caller: thank you. i have a quick shot out to judge clay jenkins and the mayor of dallas who have taught us that compassion is so much more powerful of a tool than fear. i just wanted to say that. secondly, you're knowledgeable

guest can comment on this, that i've read online that 30,000 average people daie year in the nited states from just plain influenza. perhaps that will put a perspective on the fear. >> yes compassion is important. counseling is so important. let's focus on the hospital first of all of the hospital staff that are involved in treating ebola patients, they're nervous. they're scared. and having been there, i was scared. i'm being really honest now. we need to be able to provide that encouragement, provide that support. the hospital staff in nebraska need an external conscience. we need a service to talk to their families and friends, everything is going to be ok because we're doing everyday-based medicine.

highly infectious diseases -- this is real important for the u.s. health care system. yes, we are challenged right now by the ebola virus. again i said don't just talk about the ebola virus, talk about all those highly infectious diseases, we're coming into flu season. let's look at the way we do business and how do we triage at urgent care centers, health clinics and hospitals. how -- as we come into flu fever, th body aches, face igue, -- let's use protection. i can wear this. i can talk to you. you can see my facial expression. >> so you're saying all hospital staff should be wearing this if they're in direct contact with patients? >> i think we need to look at how we triage patients.

i think we need to look back to when we had the bird flu. we saw some hospitals set up tents in their parking lot. if you're come to the hospital, don't come into the ob/gyn award, come into the tent where the nurses are wearing gloffers and they're wearing face shields and protection and we will look at you there and then. >> you brought another mask as well. do they guard against different things? yes, they do. and again we're protecting from the sneezes and coughs. we're protecting from don't put your hands above your shoulders, into your mouth, into your eyes. this is a mask that's really specialized. when we work with this in the hospital and i wear this in the field, there are many of these available on the market. i get fit tested to find out which one fits me. i wear this because it protects

all the viruses and bacteria from going through. what happens when i wear it? i sweat. it's hard to breathe. i cannot wear this all day. i have to take it off at some stage. as we're teaching our hospital staff to treat and do -- great patient care, they're going to have to wear one of these. have we trained for that? it's really uncomfortable. you want to scratch your face. again, you want to take oh, i've got some fresh air. that's real important. >> to be clear, this is for medical staff or health professionals who might actual pli be treating folks who have diseases, not necessarily for everyday people who might be concerned about catching it through some other means? >> yes, and the u.s. government has certain guidance on when and how you should wear this. but also, anyone else that is going to come into direct contact with an ebola patient needs to have something like this on. >> i want to get a few more

calls. next up is bill from south carolina on the republican line. caller: good morning, everyone and especially good morning to dr. skinner. first of all, doctor, i want to say thank you for your service to humanity. what an incredible courageous job you're doing over there. as an american, i want to say thank you for bringing such a factual perspective to this crisis and i will call it a crisis. , it's observed this issue been criticized by both sides. [indiscernible] >> bill, you're cutting out a little bit. you said you wanted to ask about students? caller: i lost you there. i want to thank dr. skinner for his service here.

and also if he could just comment about the fact that this crisis -- i wonder if he would speak to the hazards that brings to the table and how it would affect addressing this program going forward. >> on that note, i do want to bring up that the hill newspaper is reporting the house panel will be calling an ebola hearing. the story says officials will testify about the u.s. response to the ebola crisis at a hearing ater this month. it will be the fourth time law enforcements meet to discuss the virus. d -- lawmakers will neat discuss the virus. >> we need our decision makers, our politicians and all levels of our system to understand we need resources. we need their blessings. we need them to put this in a perspective that, yes, we can beat it but we're beating it

with the details and we're doing this and this. we're mobilizing the community and all our resources. we need to be really honest. we've heard statements every u.s. hospital is prepared. if you get an -- ebola patient, can you put them in in an isolation room and then contact us and we'll ensure someone will pick up that patient and take them to an ebola ready hospital? we haven't done that. if you have recently come back from west africa and you develop fever and fatigue, we don't want you to hop on a bus. we don't want you with symptoms to hop if a taxi. we don't want you with symptoms to come in an emergency department and sit next to the child with a broken arm or a pregnant mother. we'd like tow stay in your house, call us and we'll come to you and we will get you to the

hospital that has the ice lace suite and the trained staff to take the patient. we can do this. >> next up is ann from north carolina on the democratic line. ann, go ahead. caller: yes, i was very surprised the -- to hear the director of nursing from south carolina to say they did not wear gloves or wash their hands appropriately. i was just really surprised at that. also the intent about the president, why is she bringing the president into this. the governor in texas is closer to this situation than the president. and the local area is the one who was actually responsible. i think just by one hospital there making the mistake of sending the patient back home originally does not mean that

all of the hospitals are going to do that. i think that's creating the hysteria by saying something like that. i think most hospitals would know to follow that -- a different procedure, especially now with so much emphasis on that. i don't think just blaming because it happened at one hospital that it's going to happen at all the hospitals. our >> our last caller today is from maryland on the independent line. caller: good morning, dr. skinner. thank you for the information you're providing. i was wondering, there's a lot of discussion about the ebola virus and patients with the ebola virus in the united states. i was wondering if you could provide history if this there has been instances with diseases from the united states have moved to that -- >> good question. it's great that the president

for the nursing association or any hospital told the truth. we have a real challenge in the health care system to say when things aren't working to tell the truth. she's now told us that they have a situation we can fix by training. this is really important because i get through the elizabeth r. griffin foundation lots of phone calls saying they told us we're ready but honestly we're not ready but we want help. it's good to tell the truth. about the disease going from the u.s. to other areas, we saw the -- i want to talk about north america in general. -- hwe had the pandemic h. 1 n 1, we know all the transportation we have it is possible. we controlled manufacture the highly infectious diseases. we're seeing the chickungunya

yaw virus coming into the u.s. we saw this with west nile fever virus when it arrived. we're very cognizant and ware we're under the threat all the time. i have many colleagues working on these issues to protect all of the citizens of the u.s. >> dr. gavin macgregor-skinner is a special disease at the elizabeth r. griffin foundation. thank you so much for your insight today. >> it's a pleasure. >> on the next "wall street journal," david wasserman of the cook political report with the latest on the 2014 house races and predictions for seat changes. then a round table discussion on public opinion and politics with sters.can poll we will take your calls an you can join the conversation on facebook and twitter. "wall street journal" live at 7:00 eastern on c-span.

city tour takes book tv and american history on the road, traveling to cities to learn about their history and literary life. this week we partnered with comcast. about a largeook animal that in ancient times and american history we would have called a beast, the mountain lion, in what is really a garden in colorado. this is a seemingly natural place, but in many ways it has been altered by humankind. when you get this wild animal coming into this artificial landscape, you can actually cause changes in the behavior of that animal. a mountain lion's favorite food is venison. they eat about one deer per week. on this beautiful lush