when the first nurse fell ill in dallas, cdc & co blamed her for failing to observe their protocol. and they blamed her before they actually knew anything about how she contracted the virus. this, i suggest, is probably the knee-jerk doc approach: blame the nurse. that was only one of many things that pissed the nurses off (one of the other irritations being that the cdc and everytone else appears to be quite cavalier about their lives). then there was a public backlash against that, and they sort of apparently reversed field, saying that nurses are heroes, and then hinting strongly that she violated the protocol. startegic communications at its best.
yesterday, testifying in congress, frieden simply refused to say whether it was the nurses' failure to observe the cdc protocol, or the cdc protocol itself that was at fault. (the other day, sanjay gupta ran through the whole cdc protocol on cnn, getting spattered with bodily fluids on exposed skin.) i think it was scalise who just kept saying 'did she violate the protocol or not?' 'it's raining outside, congressman.' 'yes or no?' 'here's a picture of my dog, congressman.' it was an idiotic display of inability to admit when you're wrong, and a classic defend-my-bureaucracy reaction. that's always irritating and yet pitiful, but here it's liable to be deadly. a decent, open, and truthful bunch of spokespeople and officials is necessary
