Doubling Down On Stupid

CDC Director Frieden, after getting shelled for two days for blaming the victim, has now issued a non-apology apology, and clarified that he's very sorry if you understood him to be saying exactly what he did say:

"I want to clarify something I said yesterday. I spoke about a breach in protocol and that’s what we speak about in public health when we’re talking about what needs to happen. And our focus is to say, "Would this protocol have prevented the infection?" And we believe it would have. But some interpreted that as finding fault with the hospital or the healthcare worker. And I’m sorry if that was the impression given. That was certainly not my intention."

What he said, over and over, and what was repeated by his cohort Fauci at NIAID, was that despite "not knowing what happened", "there was a breach in protocol".
And since the person who has Ebola is the one who was supposed to follow the protocol, the only possible impression to those who speak English is, in the opinion of the top two doctors from the federal government in charge of infectious disease response, that
the nurse got Ebola because she fucked up.

The way to walk that back is to simply say. "I'm sorry. We don't know what happened or why this person got infected. But we're looking at every possible cause, and when we know more, we'll tell you and everybody, to prevent it from ever happening again.
I'm sorry for blaming someone on the basis of no evidence, and sounding as if I had any reason to ascribe blame to an experienced clinician with years of nursing experience, and specialty certification in critical care nursing. It was wrong of me, and I withdraw those remarks unreservedly."

But that would require both a soul and a brain.

Frieden, clearly, has neither.

And just for fun, it's come to light that there were nearly six dozen other staff members who had close contact with Duncan along with Pham, all wearing the same PPE ensemble as her, and all now on a 21-day twice daily supervised monitoring program.
More importantly, the nurses and staff caring for Pham now are wearing the exact same PPE ensemble that Pham used when she acquired her Ebola exposure. So if it turns out to be a gear or procedure problem, they're all potential next-tier Ebola victims too.

Which means the death toll of Ebola carrier Duncan and @$$clown Frieden could just keep going and going and going...