Is America botching its response to Ebola?  The third person to be diagnosed with Ebola in the United States had flown on a commercial airline flight prior to her diagnosis.  And even though federal health officials earlier said she shouldn’t have done it, it turns out that the US Centers for Disease Control (CDC) gave her permission to fly.

29-year old Amber Joy Vinson (Patient #3) is a nurse at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas, and worked alongside Nina Pham (#2) in treating Thomas Duncan (#1), the Liberian man who died at that hospital after it monumentally mucked up his diagnosis and treatment.  Pham was admitted to hospital earlier this week.

Vinson was running a slight fever before flying from Dallas to Cleveland to prepare for her wedding, and called the CDC for guidance.  But her temperature hadn’t exceeded the threshold of 100.4 F, and she was given the green light to fly.  Ebola is only contagious when a patient is symptomatic. Vinson's 99.5 F fever wasn't high enough to be considered communicable.

“She should not have traveled on a commercial airline,” CDC director Tom Frieden told reporters earlier in the day, apparently unaware his own department okayed the travel.  “The CDC guidance in this setting outlines the need for what is called controlled movement.  That can include a charter plane, that can include a car, but it does not include public transport.”  By evening, the CDC admitted what it had done.

The CDC is now tracking down passengers on her return flight, Frontier Airlines Flight 1143, for monitoring.  The plane has been cleaned, but officials say it is highly unlikely that anyone could have caught Ebola from Vinson because she was not symptomatic.

It’s still not clear why Pham and Vinson were infected, but more pieces of the puzzle are appearing.  It’s known that Thomas Duncan was in Liberia on 15 September, when he manned up and helped a stricken, pregnant neighbor get into a taxi so she could get to an Ebola treatment center.  He later helped her out of the taxi when the center couldn’t take her because it was full.  That neighbor later died.

Duncan arrived in Dallas, Texas on 20 September, intending to start a new life with his girlfriend.  But four days later, his fever was rising and he went to Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas for help.  Despite being from West Africa where the Ebola Outbreak killed hundreds of people at that point, despite showing symptoms and running a fever, the hospital diagnosed him with a “low-grade, common viral disease” and sent him home with some Tylenol and antibiotics.

On the 28th, he returned to the medical center with explosive diarrhea, projectile vomiting, and out-of-control fever.  This is where the story gets even worse.

When the CDC arrived in Dallas to get control of the screw-ups, investigators found no protocols in place.  The nurses were wearing protective gear that was woefully not up to the challenge and “did allow exposure of some parts of the skin,” said Dr. Frieden.  Some workers were using three or four layers of gear, which becomes harder to remove, making the risk of contamination “much higher.”  There was no “buddy system” for removing the gear to help prevent exposure.

The national nurses union says the hospital also left Duncan for hours in an area with other patients, played down the need for more facemasks. and handled Duncan’s lab specimens without special seals.

“Were protocols breached?  The nurses say there were no protocols,” the group said in the statement.

“I have no reason to not believe what those nurses are saying at all,” said Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.  “If that’s true, that’s clearly not acceptable.”

Dallas health officials now say it is not unreasonable to expect more Ebola patients to be diagnosed.  They’re working up a legal framework to prevent more people connected to the hospital from traveling on commercial airplanes.

Nina Pham is reportedly in good condition today, but she is at least six days into the infection – when the symptoms typically increase in severity.  Amber Vinson was put on a special plane and flown to Atlanta, where she was admitted into Emory University’s isolation unit – the same unit that treated two American missionaries who were airlifted back from West Africa after they were infected.

And in Cleveland, cops quarantined the home that Amber Vinson visited, at the resident’s request.