UNBELIEVABLE: Second Ebola Patient Got Permission to Travel From CDC

Are you ready to feel your blood boil? Good! Just days after 26-year-old nurse Nina Pham was hospitalized with Ebola after treating “patient zero” Thomas Eric Duncan, news broke on Wednesday that a second nurse has tested positive. The mind-blowing part? The nurse, Amber Vinson, flew on a Frontier Airlines flight from Dallas to Cleveland with a fever–and she says the CDC gave her permission to travel.

The same geniuses who told an Ebola-exposed nurse that it was just fine to climb into a confined space with 150 other people are now running around like chickens with their heads cut off, trying to locate all of those passengers. Let’s hope they hurry. After all, Vinson might have been contagious on the flight.

Vinson told CBS Dallas Fort Worth that she was feeling ill before boarding her flight. She had a low grade fever, but she said that officials told her it was okay to get on the plane. Vinson told CBS that she called the CDC several times with concerns.

Ebola is only contagious when a patient is symptomatic. Vinson’s 99.5 degrees Fahrenheit fever wasn’t high enough to be considered a symptom.

The CDC confirmed to FOX 4 News that they gave Vinson the green light to fly. “Vinson was not told that she could not fly,” a government spokesperson told NBC News.

The CDC…said that it was extremely unlikely that any other passengers were exposed.

“Extremely unlikely” is a phrase we’ve heard before. A few weeks ago, the same people said it was “extremely unlikely” that Ebola would spread beyond Thomas Eric Duncan’s hospital room. They were wrong. Why should we trust them this time?

Regardless of their shocking screw-up, the CDC maintains that we shouldn’t panic because Ebola can’t be spread through “casual contact.” But Vinson got it, and she was wearing a hazmat suit in a hospital isolation ward. That doesn’t sound like “casual contact.”

Regardless of how easily this virus spreads, anyone who’d had contact with Duncan should have been forbidden to travel until the incubation period was over. Now Vinson is fighting for her life in an Atlanta hospital–and hundreds of others will have to be tracked down and monitored. How much is this going to cost us, both in dollars and in human lives?

Let’s be clear: this did not have to happen. It was not inevitable, or an “act of God,” as most disasters are. Our government officials  sat back and allowed one Ebola case to spiral out of control. Currently, two more Americans are infected with a virus that kills 70% of its victims. One of those two was permitted to board a plane with 150 people and travel across the country while symptomatic.

That was no accident. It was a dereliction of duty.