tv Happening Now FOX News October 16, 2014 8:00am-9:01am PDT
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mcclure, falling done an abandoned well in odessa, texas. catching entire nation. after 50 hours of rescue she was reunited with her family. october 16th, also my husband's birthday. happy birthday, honey. bye, everybody. see you tomorrow. jon: top public health officials including director for centers of disease c answering to congress today of a nurse who treated a dying ebola patient was cleared by the centers for disease control to take a commercial flight before she came down with the disease herself. this is "happening now." i'm jon scott. heather: i'm heather nauert, in for jenna lee. the cdc director thomas frieden will face a lot of tough questions in a house and energy commerce hearing. it begins about an hour from now.
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the hospital in dallas comes under more heavy criticism about its actions and nurses. after two of its nurses contracted ebola, nina pham and amber vinson they treated thomas duncan befor lastdecide week. we're learning that the city of dallas is ho emergency meeting later this afternoon to consider additional restrictions on health care workers who have treated ebola patients. this is major. >> duncan had just flown in from liberia. fy u.s. airports are screening passengers who come from west africa for fevers. those airports include new york's jfk, newark, washington dulles, chicago o'hare and atlanta. while fears are mounting, according to a "fox news poll," more than 2/3 of respondents are very or somewhat concerned about all of this. we have live team fox coverage. shannon bream at dulles international airport which began screening today. first to jonathan serrie at emory university, i'm
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sorry, emory university hospital in atlanta where that second nurse was taken for treatment. jonathan? >> reporter: hi, jon. well that second nurse, amber vinson, originally was thought to be in a no-risk group because she and othe nurses at that dallas, texas, hospital were treating ebola patient thomas duncan wearing full protective gear. when she left for a personal trip on october 10th, she apparently had no symptoms and was okay to travel. the issue with the return trip she made on the 13th. back in dallas, fell know nurse, nina pham tested positive for ebola and am vinson back in ohio develop ad low-grade fever of 99.5 degrees. that was bel the cdc threshold of 101.5 deg for they use ebola monitoring. the cdc official gave vinson clearance to fly back to dallas board frontier airlines flight 1143. but the director of the cdc
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says that should happened. >> she should not have traveled on a commercial airline. we will from this moment forward ensure that no other individual who is being monitored for exposure undergoes travel in any way other than controlled movement . >> reporter: in addition, federal sources tell fox news's john roberts patiente may not have been completely forthcoming with cdc officials when she sought clearance to fly commercial. according to these sources her family says vinson was tired and not feeling well while in ohio. she even had to cancel events she had planned with bridesmaids in her upcoming wedding. these sources say the only thing vinson told was she had the low-grade fever of 99.5 degrees. heather, jon, back to you. >> jonathan se atlanta. thank you. >> that is a new piece of information. that is something people will be asking a lot of questions about, her canceling, potentially canceling appointments with the
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bridesmaids because she didn't feel well ahead of time. one. airports on related note screening passengers from west africa, dulles national airport outside of washington d.c. where screeners are using no-touch thermometers for testing for feverrers. what dot passengers think about this new safeguard? our live team coverage continues with shannon bream live at dulles. hi, shannon. what are people saying there? >> reporter: heather, they want to be reassured. as you can imagine people traveling through the airport which takes in a lot of international travelers every single day, they have a lt of questions. here is what we know. dulles joins the list. five airports in the u.s. will do special screenings. we've seen it takes off at jfk. customs and border patrol agents will question them and get very detailed where they have been, who they had contact with and ask them about any medical problems. they will go screenings, taking fever. >> and taking temperature if they have a fever, even if they
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clear those they will have to leave contact information before they enter out of the airport into the u.s. mainstream. but, if they do have things that appear to be troubling, fevers, other symptoms, it is possible they could be quarantined. there is cdc office here on site. they could be taken in ambulances directly to local hospitals which will potentially be informed they have a potential ebola patient or suspected ebola coming their way. here is what the president said today after convene being meetings of many key players in the discussion. >> we'll be continually examining our screening processes at airports. i want people to understand that the dangers of you contracting ebola, the dangers of a serious outbreak are extraordinarily low but we are taking this very seriously at the highest levels of government . >> reporter: the department of homeland security secretary jeh johnson says for now the screeners will be medically trained personnel. in the short term they will use
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people from the u.s. coast guard to help out with this. eventually they will contract with other people to do so. and by the way, the calls are growing to stop flights from these ebola-inflicted countries, places where they're suffering the most. we heard it from both sides of the aisle. house democrat john barrow is the latest, putting out a statement this morning thinks it is time to shut it down at least for the short-term until we get better handle what is going on but the screenings taking off in dulles. back to you. >> shannon bream, thanks. jon: meanwhile the frontier airlines plane that ebola patient amber vinson flew on the night before she became ill is grounded at denver international airport. it is being decontaminated for a fourth time we're told. however the cdc says it is perfectly safe to fly again. according to an airline official and the ebola virus can not survive outside of a host. meanwhile the crewmembers on on the are on paid leave for 21 days. heather: more troubling news out
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of sierra leone one of the country is hit hard by the ebola outbreak. the last untouched district in this nation has reported case of ebola. the district sits on mount news part of the border near guinea where the outbreak spotted and spilled into sierra leone. the world health organization warned that there could be 10,000 new c ons each week the african continent by december. wow, gross again. jon: fierce of ebola are mounting as a congressional committee getting ready for a hearing on the deadly disease and as the midterm elections are approaching. according to a new "fox news poll" think nearly half the respondents think the government is hiding information on ebola, 46%. let's talk to the political panel about all this. joe trippi former campaign manager for howard dean. karl rove, f senior advisor and deputy chief of staff to president george w. bush. both are fox news contributors. joe, if 46% of americans think
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the government is hiding something, that doesn't speak we government that is trying to handle this outbreak. >> no, it doesn't. it does point to some of the credibility that has been lost by saying, hey, we had this uncontrol and then two nurses come down with ebola. so it's problematic. but look, one of the big issues here is two places where fear has a pretty big impact and there is not a whole lot anybody can do about it, it is politics and markets and there is a lot of fear out there right now. i don't think any of that will change between now and the november 4th elections, not because of how the government handles it although they could do better but just because the amount of fear out there i don't think this will get contained in that time frame. jon: karl, when you read these polls, what do you see? >> well, the twore numbers that focus on. one is the growing concern that people have about this, in the middle of august, 62% of the people said they were
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concerned about the sp ebola. by middle of october that has grown to 68%. now more importantly, 30% were very concerned about it in august. now it is up to 37% are very concerned about it. the second number i look at, americans wh belief we ought to ban flights from three affected countries, it is now 60-35. you see this reflected in a number of contests, every senate race from alaska to north carolina, colorado to iowa, we have republican candidates saying we ought to stop flight and democratic candidates refusing to break for the administration and call for end of flights from these affected countries. it is starti seep in very powerful way in some of the senate races. jon: i wonder, joe, does this argue against some of what the president obama, you know, was elected on a platform to do? he was the candidate who said, government can do it for you. government can run your health care system and everything else.
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if people all of sudden don't have confidence that the government can knock out a virus, what does that say about the rest of the program? >> well, i mea look it is going to be hard to, with a 21-day, you know, sort of period where you have to see if the virus moves on, it is hard to say that it is going it has been stopped or it will stop or anybody would believe it would stop before the election. that is not going to happen. there have been only a few cases that made it here to the united states. you know, and, right now, look, it doesn't matter whether this fear is rational or irrational and i'm not saying, there are parts of it that are irrational. there are parts of the fear out there that are racksal. -- rational. but karl is right, politically, you look at number, people want flights stopped. they want ac now.taken whether those are right actions or not, none of that matters either. it will impact the outcome of the elections to the extent that people have that fear and,
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and politics plays into that. >> well -- >> both sides will have to either jack that fear up or try to suppress it. the people trying to suppress that fear are not going to win that fight. that is, it may abate over time but not between now and november. jon: let me ask karl about that. karl, if people are up side set about the way things are going, do they take on the president and his party or take it out on both parties and incumbents in general? >> unfortuna democrats they take it out for on the man in charge. we have two things going on here. one is, we have growing concern about terrorism and threats to america. this has been growing over the lags five or six months, largely being driven by activities of isis. but ebola is now being put into this as a th our to security. so you have the security moms and security dads we saw in the 2004 election, reappearing and ebola is being put into the same basket of concerns about terrorism, iraq, iran,
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afghanistan, all of these things. second of all, the president is looking incompetent. we had the woman, the second nurse gets on a plane, being advised by the cdc it is okay. it took the president and administration weeks before they finally said, look, when we find an ebola patient we'll immediately dispatch a cdc team. the difference where the american people are way ahead of the president on the issue of shutting down air traffic from these three countries. this all adds to the general sense that the president is disengaged, that he is incompetent. that is only going to be taken out on the president's party in the november elections. that is why it strikes me as strange that we don't have more democrat candidate distancing themselves f president, by god we need to do better and we need to stop air traffic from west africa. jon: you say in your "wall street journal" piece, karl, that republicans are gaining on democrats as the midterm elections approach. is this part of the reason why, or are there bigger issues afoot? >> well i think, this is a
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big component of it. as in anything in politics there are multiple reasons why things are happening but if you look at it, republicans now lead in eight of the democratic senate seats. they are within striking distance in at least two more. and nine of those 11, of those 11 target races we've seen movement towards the republicans, in since labor day. and i think it is being driven by general characteristics like, is this my chance to vote against president obama but it is also being driven by specific issues. let me give one example. in north carolina senator kay hagan as emerging threats subcommittee. never held an subcommittee mighting. missed an im meetingisis in order to attend new york fund-raiser. in last couple days she is defending the administration handling of ebola. this will not help her with north carolina voters. jon: what about that, joe? should members of the president's party be defending the handling of this outbreak given the way people seem to
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feel about it? >> well i haven't heard any health care professionals say that a ban on flight would be of any help. in fact they all have recommended against that. i mean, you can have that debate. the problem you have that debate in political climate. on the other hand, one thing i point out, look, we have seen some of the movement that karl's talking about but we've also seen in three or four other states, south dakota, georgia, kansas, republicans, republicans see leads shrink or races that we never thought would be in place, south dakota being one of them, come into play and where democrat or independent now has a chance of winning. so this could be, this could all turn out to be, we wake up on november 4th, see a bunch of incumbents l democrat and republican, we'll find out less than three weeks. we have to say good-bye there. joe trippi, karl rove, thank you both. >> thanks, you bet. heather: speaking of politics in
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