This is a rush transcript from "The Five," September 30, 2014. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.
DANA PERINO, CO-HOST: This is a Fox News alert. Breaking Ebola news tonight, a patient in North Texas hospital has just been confirmed to have the deadly virus. It is the first case diagnosed in the United States.
Let's go to John Roberts for more, his outside the centers for disease control in Atlanta. John?
JOHN ROBERT, FOX NEWS REPORTER: Dana, good afternoon to you. About a half an hour's time, the director of the centers for disease control, Dr. Tom Frieden, will announce at the press conference for the very first case of Ebola to arrive in the United States. They did not arrive in one of those very sophisticated medevac planes. We all know that over the last few weeks four patients, maybe five now have been brought into the United States via medevac from places like Liberia and Sierra Leone, known to have Ebola have been treated in Nebraska Medical Center as well as Emory University.
There's another patient at NIH who may who may not have the disease, we don't know just yet. But, this would be the very first case of a person traveling from West Africa on a commercial airliner to land in the United States and get sick once they were here in the U.S. We understand that the patient in the Dallas hospital and this is Dallas Health Presbyterian Hospital, in the northern part of Dallas, arrived from Liberia within the last couple of days. It's a man who apparently was asymptomatic, did not show signs of the Ebola infection on the way over, which is a good thing.
Because, if the patient with Ebola is asymptomatic and there isn't close contact with bodily fluids, like blood or mucus or some other things, the likelihood of there being transmission is greatly reduced. Of course, they're taking no precautions there in Dallas, the man is in strict isolation, and a go team for the centers of disease control will be leaving in the next few hours. A team who probably three to four scientists to help with isolation, to help with infection control and to help with treating this patient. It's not known at this point, if the patient will stay in Dallas or be medevac to one of those other high containment facilities again, Nebraska here, Emory University, NIH and (inaudible) the U.S. army medical facility in Frederick Merlin. So it's still unfolding here Dana, but what we do know is this is the very first time someone has walked off of a plane and there been a lot of suspected cases. But, to the very first confirmed time someone was walked off the plane and came down with Ebola her here the U.S.
PERINO: All right, thanks, John. We're gonna have more on this later in the hour. But first, on Sunday night, President Obama was asked to own up to underestimating ISIS, but took no personal responsibility, he chose to blame the Intel community instead.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: I think our head of the intelligence community Jim Clapper, acknowledged that have been they underestimated what had been taking place in Syria.
(END OF VIDEO CLIP)
PERINO: Some of the intelligence community took issue with that charge, one thing our intelligence official tells the New York Times, "Some of us were pushing the reporting, but the White House just didn't pay attention to it. They were preoccupied with other crisis this just wasn't a big priority." Greg, I want to ask you something about John Hayward, who writes for human events. He wrote a piece today about the communication of the White House, which is basically now on day three of trying to explain what the president meant or didn't mean. The White House said that the president's intent was not to blame the Intel community. And John Hayward said, "When your damage control needs damage control, you're in a bad place." There is a huge state of confusion.
GREG GUTFELD, CO-HOST: Yeah. Would it.
PERINO: Not a huge, but a significant one.
GUTFELD: Yeah. He really is the least inspirational boss you could ever have, because all positive achievements, it's in his possession, and whenever there's anything negative, somehow it fall into your lap. He's like a successive you know, he captures all the glory, but non on the gore (ph), the gore (ph) goes to everybody else. You know, he read that he was warned -- what? Three times. Think about this from a priority standpoint, that if he was warned about something else, three times. Like vanishing sea ice, or the suffering of Sandra Fluke or perhaps the treatment of a fellow professor. He would not ignore three warnings in any of those instances because, some warnings matter more than others, when those warnings reflect the flaws of the United States. He acts, but when it's something that it is external, for some reason, it's just not a big deal.
PERINO: There was somebody who was trying to raise awareness and then he ended up resigning, and he gave an interview. It was the DIA chief, defense intelligence agency, he's name was Michael Flynn. He left in August and he gave an interview basically explaining this. But, Eric, what I was curious about is that the Intel communities, their responsibility is to report, and analyze and then the president, the commander in chief, whoever that is, their responsibility is to choose what to do with that information. So if the president is saying that they got it wrong, he -- but the Intel community didn't write a month before, a month ago that ISIS was JV, that was the president's assessment. So after he read or didn't read the presidents daily briefing, he chose to not act and he also chose to characterize them as JV.
ERIC BOLLING, THE FIVE SHOW CO-HOST: So the Intel community has warned about ISIS for literally two to three years, we know on tape that the Intel community has spoken of the threat of ISIS, as recently as February. But, since then President Obama, or right around the same time he had called them the JV team. So then you have to ask, so what has the president done? Yes, he's blamed, but he's also named. So to stay that he didn't mean to blame the Intel community, he went so far as to name Dennis Clapper, I think blaming and naming.
PERINO: Clapper.
BOLLING: James Clapper, I'm sorry. Blaming and naming is enough to garner responsibility. So you have to ask, you know, the buck stops here or pass the buck, which one of these -- there's only two ways of handling responsibility, especially being the commander in chief, is it the buck stops here, or is it pass the buck? What's the legacy of President Obama and I think this is just another, another example of passing the buck, it never stops at the White House.
PERINO: That's interesting thing, and Bob I wanted to ask you about this, because presumably you have been in oval office at times, preparing President Carter for a possible big interview, may be 60 minutes or so -- or equivalent. And you know you do the buck -- the mock questions, and I pretend I'm Steve Kroft and you're the president and we go back and forth and we talked about possible questions. There's no doubt that they came up with this as the possible question. And if the president has that as his answer, maybe they even suggested that he use that answer. But, doesn't it strike you as strange? That given what Eric just said about the legacy of the president, and the tenancy or the reporting that belief that he assigns blame and doesn't take any responsibility for himself. Do you think that answer would have raise a little bit of concern and they wouldn't be in the position now of having to clean it up several days later.
BOB BECKEL, CO-HOST: Yeah. I would think so. I would just say remember that Clapper did say that he underestimated and they underestimated. But, the interesting thing to me is I'm not absolving Obama here of anything. But, all these quote from this former intelligence community people.
PERINO: He's -- the one in the New York Times reported today, it is current?
BECKEL: It is current, and now we've got some former intelligence people all of whom are coming out and saying some damnable things about the president of the United States. My question is if there were says brave heroic, heroic if what if I say some.
PERINO: Like I just told you about one, the Defense Intelligence Agency General, Michael Flynn.
BECKEL: Yeah.
PERINO: Who've resigned and basically said because he could not support, in fact they were not acting. Kimberly, let me ask you something about this, the president has been telling us for three years or so, more little over two and a half years that Al Qaeda is on the run. Then you have the reporting from John -- Tom Joscelyn of The Weekly Standard. Walks you through, how ISIS is really Al Qaeda and it's the tentacles and they used this metaphor of metastasizing, that ISIS is a cancer and that Al Qaeda metastasized. But, you are very familiar with cancer as a metaphor, if it me metastasizes, that's actually an even bigger problem.
GUILFOYLE: It is.
PERIONO: So wasn't that the most in past on responsibility, right, forget that.
GUILFOYLE: That's when you get a terminal diagnosis. You cannot be initial tumor and there's the off sheet, have the metastasis and if you have that in more distal parts of the body, then you have a more severe diagnosis. We are not gonna be able just do search of the -- you could have to do chemo. The problem is regardless of whom the president had working for him, he was told this information and he chose not to act. He has multiple time where is he missed opportunities to take key significant terrorists out and didn't do it. For example, we had information that we had one of the bomb makers in al Asiri, was in Syria. He could have taken out that compound, where he was training people to make undetectable bombs to be use on U.S. and European aircraft, again, a missed opportunity. He knew about this. So the fact that he's now trying to just blame Clapper and others to say that he wasn't aware, we know that's not the truth. Because there's a new study.
BECKEL: I do know.
GUILFOYLE: Hold on Bob. A new government accountability institute report reveals that Obama has only attended 42.1 percent of his daily intelligence briefings. He never misses a golf you know, outing, but these are things he should be paying attention to, especially during this heightened state of terror. It's just one of them missed opportunities that has caused the U.S. breakdown (ph).
(CROSSTALK)
BECKEL: How do you know he had a bomb -- the bomb maker in the United States? How do you know that?
GUILFOYLE: Because I read up on all the counter terrorism reports and it's fascinating, I'm gonna pass them on to you.
BECKEL: You probably should.
GUILFOYLE: Specifically that al Asiri was there, unprotectable liquid explosive.
BECKEL: If you're telling me the president of the United States and the intelligence community and the military knew that this bomb maker, who has been highly sought, was known to be in that compound, he was a bomb (ph).
GUILFOYLE: In Syria.
BECKEL: Then I'll go over to your side. I do not believe that for one single minute.
GUTFELD: I want to respond to Bob, because you're saying why didn't anyone speak up whenever -- when they have this information? Why didn't anybody say anything about the Syria issue or the ISIS issue or the White House briefs or Benghazi or DOJ or IRS and the DIA? The White House is always off duty. How is that possible? How come nobody says anything, it's because the media itself is off duty. There is no reason to actually do anything because you're going to get -- the media will not back you up. The media will always back up President Obama. So that nobody bothers to question him.
BECKEL: But.
GUTFELD: He's got them in their pocket, so he gets away with everything.
BECKEL: Greg, this kind of allegations, there are thousand ways to get them out in media of this. So may not be.
(CROSSTALK)
PERINO: Bob, this is really incredible.
BOLLING: Can I just say how stupid it sounds that we're going to sit around here and say that we knew all know about this, probably most of our audience knew about this, has heard about it. But, the president didn't know? Is that what you are trying to say? We know that the president didn't know.
BECKEL: I said, I said that the president did -- apparently he did know, but the people who chose to tell him that information has the information, is that the one case refused to resign or said like that.
BOLLING: You say the man didn't know about ISIS, we have heard about it for years, they have heard about the reporting, they have told him about it for years, you can't say he didn't know, and if he did know, and Clapper was failing on the job, then he should have gotten rid of him. Get him out of the job, fire him. (ph) On of the important jobs for every American.
BECKEL: Can you answer my question, why didn't some of these other people resign in protest?
PERINO: Why should Bob, and there were trying.
(CROSSTALK)
GUILFOYLE: And Susan Raila (ph) has the information too.
PEIRENO: Bob, You're putting too much responsibility on people whose job it is in the intelligence world to analyze and report. That's all their responsibility has to do. They're not supposed to go out and say, "I'm resigning because the president is derelict in his duty."
(CROSSTALK)
BOB: That was you said, this guy did.
GUILFOYLE: And you're passing it again.
PERINO: Because it got so bad that he actually decided to leave. I think the Intel community has shown amazing loyalty to this country and to the.
GUILFOYLE: To re strength.
PERINO: Absolutely, re strength. But, here's a question I have, Eric, let me ask you, if President Obama doesn't seem too concerned that he's blaming the Intel community, doesn't seem to be too concerned that they got it wrong. But -- do we have a more fundamental problem of Intel and assessment, like when it comes to Iran or other places where we are looking at potential trouble?
BOLLING: You know, I don't know. I hope not. I think the Intel community is doing their job. I think they're coming out with the intelligence that we need to keep us safe and then, like as you just point out, and then what? So they develop the information, they hand it over and then there's decisions that have to be made. And I think that's where the breakdown is happening, the decision, they're reporting it. But, the decision, we.
GUILFOYLE: But what if he is be elected, president of the United States, his call.
BOLLING: And the problem is he has been not -- has been aggressive on terror. He's surely not been aggressive on Iran.
GUILFOYLE: He doesn't want to be, he's not comfortable with it.
(CRSSTALK)
BECKEL: Iran is gonna end up being the biggest failure, where were your questions follow?...
BOLLING: We're going to arm Iran under President Obama's legacy. We are going to -- he -- they will have a bomb before President Obama's leaves.
BECKEL: They won't have one.
BOLLING: Ok.
GUILFOYLE: The problem is.
BECKEL: Let me ask you a question, former FBI counter terrorism task force member said, "Obama administration is more concerned about being politically correct than the safety of Americans." One of the most outrageous recto (ph) lines I have ever heard. Do you believe that?
GUTFELD: I do and I tell you why because.
BECKEL: Really? Really believe that?
GUTFELD: Let me finish.
BECKEL: Ok. Sorry.
GUTFELD: Because he has actually expressed, expressed a desire to quell this hypothesized backlash of Americans against any kind of threats to us. He's always been concerned about Islam phobia. So the idea that PC trumps safety, he would almost agree with it because that's his belief. He believes that -- there's an American potential for backlash and that might affect our appeal worldwide. That what he is worried about, I'm not saying he's not interested in our safety, but he is more interested, his priority has always been about our reaction to external threat as opposed to the external threat.
(CROSSTALK)
BECKEL: So you say, you agree about this coming.
PERINO: Bob, you actually, you just said that you wanna know why nobody spoke up? He's speaks up, he's a former FBI counter terrorism task force member, he speaks up and then you trash him, so doesn't blame why people.
GUILFOYLE: That doesn't anybody. BECKEL: Would you not trash somebody who has said that the president.
PERINO: Bob, I'm saying that you, not -- you through.
(CROSSTALK)
BECKEL: Politically correct. I'll trash him from the he die. And I'll trash his grave.
PERINO: Not success, you just answer your own question.
BECKEL: No. This guy, wait a minute. I heard what Greg said, but wait a second, you all are agreeing with the fact that the president of the United States being politically correct.
PERINO: No. We are calling (ph) something.
BECKEL: And more important than the safety of the American people?
GUTFELD: I'm going to tell you. Unintentionally he makes us less safe.
BECKEL: Ok, unintentionally.
GUTFELD: Unintentionally he makes us less safe.
PERINO: I'm sorry. I think it's intentional.
BECKEL: No.
PERINO: If you don't act, there are consequences for a decision not to act. The consequence in this case is that we are now embroiled in a situation with ISIS.
GUILFOYLE: Correct.
PERINO: That Marie Harf, the State Department spokesperson says, "was even surprised by their own success."
GUTFELD: Right.
PERINO: I don't think that you can excuse -- not acting is a decision, there's a consequence for it. Legally.
BOLLING: Can I add on to that? In this respect, that we will be less safe under President Obama, intentionally, lifting the sanctions.
BECKEL: So that's for the.
BOLLING: Stop Bob. I'm going to specifically say, in this world, lifting sanctions on Iran, allowing them to develop a bomb will down the road prove that we have become less safe because of President Obama's policies.
GUILFOYLE: That's the problem.
BOLLING: I'll take that lane.
GUILFOYLE: And when you know where high the targets are and you take a pass and you don't act on it. And when you don't defend your intelligence briefings, you prefer to get them in writings. You have plausible deniability so that no one warned you in person about the threat or real time intelligence, that's on him. That is an intentional act that is not making Americans safer.
PERINO: Yes it is. OK, we got to go.
BECKEL: It put political correctness above the safety of Americans. Remember you said that, OK? Remember everybody in this table you said that, I want to remind you of it.
GUILFOYLE: Happy to go to the.
BECKEL: It's unbelievable comment.
PERINO: We're waiting on an update from the CDC on the first Ebola case confirmed in the U.S. will have that conference video any minute. Up next, the Muslim convert accused of beheading a woman in Oklahoma, was charged with fir4st degree murder today, but will he face the entire charges next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BOLLING: All right this is Fox News alert, we're awaiting a news conference from the CDC headquarters in Atlanta on the first patient in the U.S. diagnosed with Ebola, that patient is in the North Texas hospital right now. We'll have that briefing to you as soon as it begins. But today, the Muslim convert accused of beheading a co-worker and attempting to behead another was charged in Oklahoma, first degree murder and assault, but no terror charges. Last night Alton Nolen's sister spoke to Greta, she claims her brother wasn't a terrorist.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MEGAN NOLEN, SISTER OF BEHEADING SUSPECT ALTON NOLEN: He grew up in a Christian household, I just think he might have got involved with the wrong people, you know, pleasing the wrong things. And basically corrupting his mind with, you know, with just things that are inhuman, and I just don't understand that, I really don't, I honestly don't believe it's an act of terrorism.
(END OF VIDEO CLIP)
BOLLING: And the feds and yet to designate this terror attack, despite of Facebook page of Nolens littered (ph) with sympathetic posting to Jihad's like Bin Laden. And last night on "The Kelly File," a Breitbart Texas reporter laid out another possible link to terror.
BOB PRICE, BREIBART TEXAS NEWS CONTRIBUTOR: He went to the same mosque as the 20th hijacker from 9/11. I spoke with Saad Mohammed -- with care actually, at the Islamic center of Oklahoma City and he confirmed the connection between -- there wasn't a direct connection between the two people, but he confirmed that both of those people -- both of those terrorists went to the same mosque.
MEGYN KELLY, THE KELLY FILE HOST: Is it Zacarias Moussaoui?
PRICE: That's correct.
(END OF VIDEO CLIP)
BOLLING: All right. KG, so now we have a -- we have at least the link to some sort of a mosque that has the link to terror, we've got the guy you know, yelling Allah far before behead. Behead something sounds like ISIS as well. And this one, on the Facebook page, I read this, he had this posted, "Islam will rule the world, freedom can go to hell."
GUILFOYLE: Yeah, I mean, I don't know, it seems pretty clear cut in terms of what his intentions were and what ideology and beliefs he had, and he even when he step further because, he was trying to convert people on his workplace. But he was also fired that day right? So then that muddies the water a little bit. But, there shouldn't be just conclusively one pact. They can pursue these charges at the state level right now, so nothing falls between the cracks, but it should not prevent them from calling this what it is. They failed to do so they failed to act with Major Nadal Hassan and bowed to pressure from the department of justice to call it work place violence. They should, I hope, learn something from the past, really vigorously investigate this. There's already so much out there that we're already aware of, not to mention getting any computer records, I like said, talking to the contacts and any people that perhaps could have help radicalized him. As far as the family members saying, he wasn't a terrorist, he wanna believe what she wanna believe about her family. (CROSSTALK)
BOLLING: Of course, they said. Because they want the additional.
GUILFOYLE: That correct.
PERINO: The Tsarnaev brothers -- family said the same thing.
BOILLING: Bob, can I ask you where the department of justice is? Eric Holder decided that to weigh in on (inaudible) he weighed it on Ferguson. Why is he is not weighing in on this one?
BECKEL: I have no idea. I would say, I don't know, I assume this guy's probably a terrorist or sympathetic terrorist, but linking the facts that he went to it -- to a mosque with the 20th bomber, I mean John Wilkes Booth went to the same church.
(CROSSTALK)
BOLLING: Well, that's Lincoln did.
BECKEL: I don't.
GUILFOYLE: At one facet.
BOLLING: That's one PCLL Al Akhbar before he beheaded, one woman try to behead. Wait a second, Islam will rule -- I will give you another one. He's got a picture Al Akhbar written over a picture of Statue of Liberty on his Facebook page too. I mean, if this isn't terrorism Bob, I don't know what it is. Can we at least agree on that?
BECKEL: But if you're right, pictures of things over the Statue the Liberty?
BOLLING: Ok.
PERINO: I have a question for Kimberly.
BOLLING: Yeah.
GUILFOYLE: Yes?
BOLLING: Yeah?
PERINO: Because I was curious about the process. So the -- he's going to be charged and then he's going to be arraigned?
GUILFOYLE: He's gonna be -- yes, he gonna be arraigned on that part.
PERINO: Can the designation of workplace violence or terrorism? Is it fluid? Or does it have to be determined before the arraignment.
GUILFOYLE: No. In particular right now he's just facing, like standard state charges of first degree murder which in that state carries the death penalty. So the penalty that he would receive under either designation would be the same. Nevertheless, they're not precluded from pursuing federal charges you know, concurrently or even consecutively with the state charges. So he's gonna be arraigned till he get a lawyer point to unless someone accepts that to do it and he will proceed for on this charges.
BOLLING: One of the other things right? If they went vehemently towards this terror, would that say to other people who may be thinking about dealing this?
(CROSSTALK)
GUTFELD: No. I don't think that matters to the people doing it. And I tell you why, because this is a virus that has been around since the beginning of time. I actually feel bad for the mother because she actually believes in what she's saying. This is the predatory nihilism of the loser, and it's been around forever. You have seen it in ISIS, you see it in school shooters and you see in stalkers. Agileness (ph) bitter band who killed out of their own enviousness. The problem with radical Islam is that indulges misogyny. It gives an avenue to exercise your rage over envy. And our culture in a way, use this envy to the glorification of material status and celebrity. And that marginalizes losers even more. The only solution to this is you treat this like a spree killings, and which is -- to suppress these copy cats, is you charge them, you execute them and you forget them, because losers are incited by the attention and in immortality that we give them and in the media.
BOLLING: We got to leave her right there. Coming up, breaking news out of North Texas, where the first patient in the U.S. has been diagnosed with the deadly Ebola virus. We're waiting an update from the CDC in Atlanta, we'll have that for you live in just a minute, stick around.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
GUTFELD: This is a Fox News alert. We are awaiting a news conference from the CDC head quarters in Atlanta. On the first patient in the U.S. diagnosed with Ebola. Fox's John Robert is there. Hey John, do you know what the patient was doing in West Africa before he came here? Or she came here?
JOHN ROBERTS, FOX NEWS: It is a he, we can confirm that and the patient was in Liberia, we don't know a whole lot about the patient Greg, we do know that apparently it's not a medical worker, this would be a civilian, who boarded a flight from Liberia ended up in Dallas, don't know if it came to Atlanta or went directly to Dallas or went through a European hub on the way here, but definitely an Ebola patient was flying on a commercial airline. Landed in Dallas, apparently was asymptomatic on the flight on the way over but became very, very ill. High fever, vomiting, some of the classic symptoms of Ebola.
The person presented themselves at the Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in the northern part of Dallas. And based on the travel history -- and hospitals around the country, Greg, have been flagged by the CDC, have been warned by the CDC, that any time somebody comes in with symptoms like that, ask where they've been. When they found out this person had recently traveled from Liberia, they instantly put him into isolation.
Now, the isolation unit in Dallas is not the same as the isolation unit that they have just down the street at Emory University Hospital, where three patients with Ebola have been treated, two of them treated, one of them being treated now, or in Nebraska or at the NIH or at the U.S. Army medical facility up in Frederick, Maryland.
So maybe that that person, depending on how sick they are, only stayed there for a short time before they're medivacked to another one of these facilities. But the Centers for Disease Control will be sending a go team of three or four scientists, doctors, health-care workers, to Dallas to help the hospital take care of this patient, Greg.
GUTFELD: Dana, you go ahead.
PERINO: John, I have two questions, do we know if this person, the patient, is a U.S. citizen? And do you -- could you explain a little bit if you know about the incubation period, the period between when he may have contracted Ebola and now? How long a period is that, about 12 days, I think?
ROBERTS: Yes, we don't know the nationality at this point. We can assume either Liberian or American or Liberian-American.
As far as the incubation period goes, it can be as short as a few days all the way up to almost three weeks. It's why you have to be very careful when treating these patients to make sure that you're outside of that window of infection opportunity. So it's likely that this person probably would have been affected sometime within the last week or ten days or so.
GUILFOYLE: Hi, John. It's Kimberly Guilfoyle.
ROBERTS: Hey, Kimberly.
GUILFOYLE: My concern is basically what other people could have been exposed, right? Because it is a little bit unclear, in terms of the way that you become symptomatic, the manifestation of symptoms, where someone could maybe not be feeling well but could still be contagious, especially in such a quick period of time. They start to express with high fever, with the vomiting, all of those kind of stereotypical symptoms. This guy was on a plane. Has everyone been notified on that plane? Who did he come in contact with afterwards? Does the CDC have protocol in place for notification for possible exposure?
ROBERTS: The Centers for Disease Control, the Texas Department of Public Health, the Dallas County Health and Human Services Department will all be looking in to trace the route that he took from Liberia here to the United States, and they will be contacting many, if not all of the people, who traveled on the aircraft with him and any or all people who were in contact with him once he arrived in the United States.
You know, you can be asymptomatic or just start to show signs of a little bit of malaise with Ebola and, within a number of hours, suddenly be very, very sick.
And one thing that we did learn from Dr. Rick Sacra (ph), who was the doctor who was just released from the Nebraska Medical Center, who was working for SimUSA in Liberia. Now, he was an obstetrician. He was delivering babies. He was not taking care of Ebola patients, and he got very, very sick with Ebola. They haven't yet tracked down the epidemiology, the origin of that infection just yet.
But they believe one of his obstetrical patients, pregnant woman, came in. It was either a cesarean section or vaginal birth, and blood probably would have gotten onto Dr. Sacra's hands, maybe around his nose, eyes, mouth or whatever. And even though she was asymptomatic at the time, she still had the virus in her blood. So just showing no signs of disease is not a guarantee that you're not going to pass it to anybody.
BOLLING: Hey, John, so I have to put myself there. If I'm in that hospital or around that hospital, I think I'd be very, very nervous. Have they, the Texas Health Center in North Dallas, have they locked that place down or are they going to lock it down until the CDC gives us an all clear?
ROBERTS: Well, they haven't locked the hospital down, but they have put the patient in strict isolation. But you bring up a very good point, Eric, because all of the other Ebola patients who have come into the United States came in on very sophisticated medevac flights, Phoenix Air carrying that Centers for Disease Control containment unit. They walked out in Tyvek suits with respirators on to make sure that they didn't pass the virus to anyone.
This person, as sick as they were, walked into the emergency room of this hospital, would have been in contact with the -- with the receptionist, probably a triage nurse, doctors, other medical workers, who would have come in to take blood pressures and vital signs. And it would have been some time, even though they asked the crucial question, "Have you travelled to West Africa?" That person would have come in contact with many others in the hospital, and I'm sure they are looking very closely at that chain of events as this person went into the isolation unit, because you're just not ready for it. It just kind of comes in out of the blue.
BOLLING: If I may follow up, so all the people that have treated this guy, will have treated this gentleman, they -- I can't imagine they're going to be allowed to go home and possibly spread something that that don't -- we won't know immediately whether they've contacted it or contracted it, as well. Do we know what we're going to do with all the hospital people that have come in contact with him?
ROBERTS: We don't just yet, though isolation probably, at least for a number of days, is a good idea. We will learn more about that, because an infectious disease specialist from the hospital will be joining this press conference that's about to happen at the CDC on the telephone, along with Zachary Thompson, who is the head of the Dallas County Department of Health and Human Services.
So believe me, Eric, now that they have got this confirmation -- and even before they got this confirmation, because it was highly suspect, they have been taking a lot of precautions to make sure that this patient is well- isolated.
Here's the interesting thing. When I talked to the Centers for Disease Control this morning, a source told me it appears to be a low-risk case. We think this will turn out to be like many of the other cases, like the one in Mt. Sinai Hospital there in New York City, where the person turned out to have a disease other than Ebola; many of them have simply had malaria, which itself kills a lot more people than Ebola, though it's not contagious. You have to get it through a mosquito.
But throughout the day, suddenly started getting rumblings that, well, the mixed messages about this guy's story, maybe the risk was a little higher. My spider sense started tingling,, and I thought, we better get over here to the CDC, because I think this is going to turn out to be the very first case of Ebola walking into the United States, if you will.
BECKEL: Hi, John. This is Beckel. I -- it didn't really walk in; it flew in, didn't it? I mean, isn't the one place that they should be more worried about airplanes, given the fact that there's very little fresh air on airplanes and it's recycled, the air, on a regular basis?
ROBERTS: Obviously, you know, if you've never gotten sick on an airplane from just the common cold or the flu or anything else, Bob, you know that, if you're in proximity, if you're sick and you're in proximity to a number of people, there's a good chance that a couple of them at least will probably come down be whatever you had.
But Ebola is actually not that easily trance transmissible. Don't forget: You can't really sneeze or breathe and somebody will catch it in the way you could the common cold or a flu virus. You have to come in contact with a lot of saliva or mucus, diarrhea, vomiting, blood, things like that. And they do know how -- here's the good thing. They do know how to control Ebola.
And here's a very good example of that. Nigeria, the Centers for Disease Control this morning said that they believe that the outbreak in Nigeria has been contained. Because the medical approach in Nigeria far different than it is in Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea.
They also believe that Senegal, because of quick action forestalled and avoided a possible outbreak of Ebola there. So they do know how to control it. They do know how to either take care of a patient or let it burn itself out.
The problem is, in those three big West African country where Ebola is raging, there's no way to contain it, because there's so much interaction between people.
PERINO: John, what do we expect to hear from the CDC? We're awaiting their press conference. I wonder if you've heard. What kind of questions do you think they can answer, or will it just be a lot of "We don't know. We're checking and we'll get back to you"?
ROBERTS: Well, I think it will be obviously the background of this person? Were they living in Liberia? Were they visiting Liberia? Were they working in Liberia? What were the airlines that they flew over on? And it's a good bet that it could be either American Airlines, because Dallas is a hub; or it could be Atlanta, which is a major overseas hub, as well. And they do have direct flights to Monrovia, Liberia.
So -- but it could be any one of a number of other carriers, as well. Probably have you been in contact with people who are on the plane or planes with them? Have you been in contact with people who he might have been in contact with, as Eric was talking about, prior to and upon his arrival at the hospital? Will the patient be staying here in Dallas, or will they be traveling -- or will they be taken to a high-containment facility at Emory or in Nebraska or in Washington or in Frederick, Maryland?
And then what about the prudence of maintaining regular flights between these countries and the United States. I think the airlines will tell you and homeland security will tell you that there are precautions in place to minimize the risk. But I think this will open up that line of questioning, again, as well.
Remember, British Airways stopped flights for a month. And then they may still be stopped. I'm not sure. I know it was until the end of August. From West Africa to the United Kingdom. So there may be some airlines that are considering similar moratoriums on flights, though I haven't heard anything at this point.
GUTFELD: John, one of the, I guess, good news about Ebola is that it's a fairly stable disease. In the last, I guess, four decades, it really doesn't mutate.
But there is a fear that there's a possibility that it might mutate. Do you -- have you heard anything about that? Has anybody said anything about a possibility of a new strain or a more virulent one that spreads through the air or whatnot?
ROBERTS: You know, Eric, there's always the chance that viruses can mutate, because each time they infect a person, each time they infect a cell, they mutate to some degree. Sometime -- so far there has been no sign that Ebola has mutated to any degree which would make it transmissible by air.
GUTFELD: We lost him.
BOLLING: Oh, boy.
GUTFELD: Did we just lose -- there he goes.
PERINO: There he went.
BOLLING: I wanted to ask him. He's at the CDC. The...
GUILFOYLE: We're going to take a quick bleak.
GUTFELD: All right, we're going to take a quick break. We're going to come back and talk more Ebola. Stick around.
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