1115.org

C”N”N strikes again.

Wolf Blitzer’s Situation Room decided yesterday that their Senior Legal Analyst Jeff Toobin’s medical opinions trump those of the Center for Disease Control’s doctors. Presumably they also trump those of C”N”N’s name-brand medical correspondent, Dr. Sanjay Gupta.

Yesterday morning, the CDC held a press conference at which they made it very clear under what circumstances exposure to traveling TB salesman Andrew Speaker constituted a significant health risk:

TB is spread via an airborne route with prolonged and continued exposure, and from some of the evidence that Dr. Castro shared with you yesterday on previous flight investigation, flights shorter than eight hours in duration did not pose a significant risk, and so we’re really concentrating on those prolonged flights with greater than eight hours in duration.

Dr. Castro is Admiral Ken Castro, the Director of the CDC’s Division of Tuberculosis Elimination. I hazard a guess that he might know what he’s talking about. I say that only because:
a) he doesn’t seem to have been appointed by the Bush administration
b) he isn’t employed by C”N”N, either as a consultant or analyst or correspondent.
c) no one has described him as best buds with Monica Goodling

But what Dr. Castro said doesn’t sell very much Viagra, it turns out. So here’s what Blitzer got Toobin to say yesterday on the Situation Room:

TOOBIN: And I think we may be focusing too much on this plane issue. I mean yes of course those people are at risk because they were in a confined space, but what about the other people he potentially exposed in his law practice. What if he sat across someone for three hours and had a deposition? I would be nervous if I was that person. What if you know you had — you were a co-worker of his? What if you were, you know, a cab driver in a cab with him, his dry cleaner? I mean these — there are a list of people that he potentially exposed is not limited to the aircraft passengers. It’s everyone and apparently he’s been infected for quite a number of months.

BLITZER: Because — and I have spoken to some of the passengers today — his fellow passengers and the mental anguish they and their families are going to be going through over these coming weeks, months and maybe even years, that’s obviously going to be not necessarily even in the back of their minds. That’s going to be very worrisome.

TOOBIN: And not just the airline passengers, absolutely. I mean it is a very scary thing. I mean think if you had the next office to this fellow, think if you, you know worked in — you were a paralegal or a secretary in his office where you saw him every day and he was in the office for hour after hour. Yes, it appears the kind of TB that he had is not immediately contagious, but it’s a very scary situation.

Are you scared and angry yet? Funny how I was talking about Bush and fear-mongering and scared and angry just yesterday. Sometimes the universe just conspires to draw your attention to uncanny parallels, doesn’t it?

Andrew Speaker, in case you haven’t noticed, is this week’s Anna Nicole Hilton.

Since I have not been blessed with a HDTV, I couldn’t tell whether or not Wolf Blitzer had a wet spot on his pants yesterday. If he did, it surely came from the heaven-sent coincidence that Speaker’s new father-in-law works in the Tuberculosis division of the CDC.