Maine Filing Order to Enforce Nurse Quarantine
ERIN BURTNETT, CNN ANCHOR: OUTFRONT tonight, breaking news, Maine officials filing a court order to force nurse Kaci Hickox just back from the Ebola zone into quarantine. Her lawyer is OUTFRONT tonight. Plus the rocket launch that ended in an enormous fireball, a catastrophe. Was 40-year-old technology behind the explosion? And Ferguson's police chief supposedly on the way out. Will it make a difference on whether Officer Darren Wilson is indicted? Let's go OUTFRONT. Good evening. I'm Erin Burnett. And OUTFRONT tonight the breaking news the fight over mandatory quarantine for those returning from the Ebola zone is heating up. Neither side giving an inch tonight. Maine health officials at this hour say they are filing a court order to mandate quarantine for Kaci Hickox, that's the nurse who was first forcibly quarantined in New Jersey after returning from treating Ebola patients in West Africa. Now she is in Maine where she lives, where she is refusing to follow the state's quarantine orders. Hickox said she has twice tested negative for Ebola. She's still in the incubation period but she feels it is sufficient for her to self-monitor.</s>KACI HICKOX, NURSE FIGHTING MANDATORY EBOLA QUARANTINE: I don't plan on sticking to the guidelines. I remain appalled by these home quarantine policies that had been forced upon me.</s>BURNETT: We're going to speak to Hickox's lawyer in just one moment. But first the president. Today President Obama met at the White House with a group of health care workers fighting Ebola. He warned against rules that he says could discourage volunteers from working in West Africa.</s>BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We have to keep in mind that if we're discouraging our health care workers who are prepared to make these sacrifices from traveling to these places in need, then we're not doing our job in terms of looking after our own public health and safety.</s>BURNETT: Jean Casarez beings our coverage OUTFRONT tonight in Fort Kent, Maine. That is where Kaci Hickox is tonight.</s>JEAN CASAREZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Doctors Without Borders nurse Kaci Hickox had defiantly opposed being forcibly quarantined.</s>HICKOX: I am not going to sit around and be bullied by politicians and forces to stay in my home when I am not a risk to the American public.</s>CASAREZ: After returning from treating Ebola patients in Sierra Leone last Friday, she was forced to stay in this tent at Newark Liberty Airport in New Jersey, even though she tested negative for Ebola twice. Now at home in Maine she's facing pushback from state health officials. New Jersey Governor Chris Christie has heatedly his decision to quarantine Hickox.</s>GOV. CHRIS CHRISTIE (R), NEW JERSEY: She needed to be isolated because she was suspected to have Ebola. So no, I have no concerns. And finally neither do the CDC who is on the ground in university hospital monitoring the conditions she was in. She had access to the Internet and we brought her takeout food.</s>CASAREZ: Another Doctors Without Border volunteer Craig Spencer treated Ebola patients in Guinea. Days after coming back, he walked freely around Manhattan. The organization did not require him to self-quarantine and defends its position with Hickox, saying, "MSF strongly disagrees with blanket forced quarantine for health care workers returning from Ebola affected countries." To NBC freelance cameraman Ashoka Mukpo, an Ebola survivor who sat down with CNN's Don Lemon, Hickox and other health care workers have the right to monitor their own situation.</s>ASHOKA MUKPO, EBOLA SURVIVOR: And to treat them as if they are a potential problem as opposed to a public asset, I just think it's extreme and I don't think it's the right way to act.</s>CASAREZ: If Hickox does decide to sue the state of New Jersey for its forced quarantine, Christie says.</s>CHRISTIE: Get in line. I've been sued lots of times before. Get in line. I'm happy to take it on.</s>CASAREZ: And we are right here in Fort Kent, Maine. It is the northern part of Maine, along the Canadian border. Kaci Hickox is right up this road, secluded we believe in a home, her boyfriend's home, we understand. But it may not be that way when the sun comes up because she is vowing to leave her home and the state of Maine is vowing to go to court to get an order for mandatory quarantine -- Erin.</s>BURNETT: All right. Thank you very much, Jean Casarez. Kaci's lawyers will be with me in just a moment and answer those questions of where she'll be tonight. I want to go first to Dr. Sanjay Gupta who was at the White House meeting today with the president and Ebola specialists. What happened, Sanjay?</s>DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, you know, some of that -- some of which you just heard in terms of the president's frustration with how things are being handled with some of the inconsistencies, in terms of some people being quarantined and others not being quarantined, and the impact that's having on health care workers going to West Africa was a lot of what he was talking about. But I think, you know, Erin, it was almost as much as what you saw as what you heard. Take a look at a quick image. These are some images, on the left image, a picture that I took from inside the White House today. It's health care workers with the president, some of them have just returned from Liberia. They're within the 21-day period. They're with the president at the White House. On the right, Kaci Hickox, even talking about, also returned from Liberia, within the last 21 days, all of them are asymptomatic, but on the left, there with the president in the White House, in the house, in quarantined. They're now facing a possible mandatory quarantine. And I think it was that dichotomy in some way, the optics of that, Erin, that he really wanted to sort of point out.</s>BURNETT: Obviously, after that very public hugging of Nina Pham that many people are still talking about, which he did very much on purpose to show that he would touch her. You had a chance to speak with some of those health care workers. What did they tell you?</s>GUPTA: Well, you know, the health care workers that had just returned, I really wanted to get at this issue, if you came back and were put into mandatory quarantine, first of all, how would you feel about that, would it impact your ability to do your work, would it impact your desire to go back to West Africa. Dr. Daniel Chertow, who the president singled out today, called a hero for some of the work that he's been doing. I asked him that, take a listen to what he said.</s>DR. DANIEL CHERTOW, EBOLA HEALTH CARE WORKER: I have another job that I have to do. And, you know -- you know, based upon the science of this, if I felt like I was putting my wife at risk, my 2-year-old at risk, my co-workers at risk, I would take myself out of the game.</s>GUPTA: You know, he has a wife, he has kids, you know, he got back as a physician, working over there in Liberia and he told me, he said, the first thing I did was I hug my wife and I hug my two kids. I wouldn't have done that if I believe in any way that I was putting them at risk. And, you know, it may seem like a minor point, Erin, but I think it's a major one, obviously. I was in West Africa myself. That's really putting it to the test, right?</s>BURNETT: Yes.</s>GUPTA: With your own family, how you behave, and that's how he put it.</s>BURNETT: It certainly is. Of course, and you look at Dr. Craig Spencer, you know, he no doubt he was with his fiancee. He certainly didn't think he was putting her at risk, it turned out he had Ebola. So I ask the question, nobody thinks that it could happen to them.</s>GUPTA: Certainly at the time, though, that he was with his fiancee he wasn't sick and I think it's a point that Dr. Chertow made as well. You're not --</s>BURNETT: Yes.</s>GUPTA: You're not going to infect somebody, you're not going to transmit the virus unless you're sick. If you develop any symptoms then obviously you need to get checked out.</s>BURNETT: All right. Thank you very much, Sanjay. And joining me now, a lawyer for Kaci Hickox, Norman Siegel. Good to have you with me. So I want to start here with what's happening in Maine. The governor of Maine is doubling down. We have a statement he just said, Kaci Hickox has been, quote, "unwilling to follow the protocols set forth by the Maine CDC and the U.S. CDC for medical workers who have been in contact with Ebola's patients." He went on to say, "Seeking legal authority to enforce her home quarantine." What is she doing about that?</s>NORMAN SIEGEL, ATTORNEY FOR QUARANTINED NURSE: Well, we're talking to her tonight to talk about her options and what the consequences would be. The state of Maine, the ball is in their court, they have to decide whether they will get the court order. We've been trying to persuade them not to get the court orders so that we can amicably resolve this. But if they decide to go to court we have three days to then challenge it and we will do exactly that. And the reasoning will be that the state of Maine has no justification, no justification to quarantine Kaci because Kaci does not have any symptoms of Ebola disease and therefore she's not at harm to the health, welfare, safety of anyone in the state of Maine.</s>BURNETT: So let me just ask you, though, this whole issue of symptoms. Obviously, we now know there was a world health sponsored study that appeared in the "New England Journal" magazine that said 13 percent of people who get Ebola never had a fever, which is sort of the basic symptom everyone is, quote-unquote, "self-monitoring for." Obviously if you're sick or throwing up, and you're someone like Kaci, you would know that that's a symptom and you would also reach out. But I suppose the question is, obviously there's an incubation period, so she could get symptoms at any point during that period. That's why many states -- it's not just Maine, New Jersey, New York, Maryland, Illinois are all doing the same thing.</s>SIEGEL: Yes, but they are doing those protocols based, in my opinion, on fear and on myth, not on medical fact. The medical community is very solid on the grounds that if you don't have the symptoms, then you are not putting people at risk. And part of the problem is, is the political leadership in those states is misleading their constituents by not explaining to them in a massive public education campaign exactly how this disease is transmitted. It is similar to, when I was the head of the Civil Liberties Union in '85 when the HIV virus hit us and everybody were scared, people wouldn't want to drink out of the same cup. People who are concerned about HIV/AIDS and what happened was, there was discussion about quarantine. Fortunately we defeated that. We have to do the same thing here.</s>BURNETT: So has she decided whether she's going to violate this quarantine or not?</s>SIEGEL: She is not going to agree to the restrictions that they place on her. If they get the court order, then we will go to court and we will challenge it.</s>BURNETT: And if she wins her case, she walks free, will she seek other damages?</s>SIEGEL: That is something that we'll consider. I think Kaci is, in my opinion, an impressive American. She's very knowledgeable of this issue. The main concern is that her voice and the voice of people in the health community in this country, that they should be part of this debate. This debate should not be led and directed by the politicians/</s>BURNETT: Yes.</s>SIEGEL: It should be led in directly by the medical community.</s>BURNETT: And on the medical community, you know, some people that don't understand this, don't see the way you see this, or Kaci sees this. They say, look, Ebola, has hit health care workers harder than anyone else, 244 of them have died. The same percent, even higher, than Ebola hitting the general population in these countries. Let me just make my point here. A doctor came back to New York. Of course he thought he had taken every precaution, he wouldn't have been at home with his fiancee, exposing her if he didn't so, right? Of course he thought he had done everything. So not everybody knows whether they were necessarily exposed or not. And I guess the question I just want to ask you, if people should trust health care workers implicitly? So that's why some people say, why wouldn't they just have a quarantine? After all, they're told not to go to work for 21 days, why not just stay home?</s>SIEGEL: Because we believe in principle in this country, we believe in the Constitution and the government can't take away your liberty unless there is some compelling basis for it. It doesn't exist here. The myth, number one, is that if for 10 days someone doesn't have the symptoms, on the 11th day they get the fever. Those first 10 days when they are interacting with people in the public, they are not putting those people in jeopardy.</s>BURNETT: Right.</s>SIEGEL: And if the politicians would explain that, and stop playing political games, we could deal with this in a medical way, not in a political way.</s>BURNETT: All right. Thank you very much. Appreciate your time to explain it. Thank you.</s>SIEGEL: Thank you.</s>BURNETT: And OUTFRONT next, investigators searching for answers after the spectacular explosion of this NASA rocket last night, just about 24 hours ago. What's amazing is that that rocket was running on a 40- year-old engine design. We're going to tell you what happened. Plus news that the Ferguson police chief is about to go. Will that do anything to calm tensions if Officer Darren Wilson isn't indicted? And there's increasingly -- increasing certainty tonight that U.S. strikes did not take out key terrorist leaders in Syria. Leaders that were planning an attack on the United States. Are they actively plotting one tonight?