Trump has put Vice President Mike Pence in charge of handling the response to the coronavirus.
Are you scared yet? You should be. Because Pence has already proven he does not value the opinions of the CDC or health officials when it comes to containing the spread of a virus.
As governor of Indiana, Pence masterminded cancelling a free-needle program for addicts in the state. AIDS cases exploded. And now he's going to bring his clenched butt cheeks morality scolding to the Coronavirus panic?
AOC nailed it via Twitter.
The Washington Post reminds us that Pence chose prayer over the recommendations from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The spread of the disease was attributed to people injecting Opana, an addictive painkiller, with shared needles. But Pence didn’t agree with federal health experts that distributing clean needles was a good idea.
“I don’t believe effective anti-drug policy involves handing out drug paraphernalia,” he told the Indianapolis Star at the time. Despite assurances from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that it is an effective way to halt the spread of infections and diseases such as HIV and hepatitis B and C, Pence said if state lawmakers tried to send him a bill for a needle-exchange program, he would veto it.As cases spiked, Pence reportedly turned to prayer.
And this is not some partisan criticism of Mike Pence, Even if he is a right-wing religious zealot and anti-LGBTQ scold, but the findings from Yale University's investigative report:
In 2018, researchers at Yale University found the epidemic could have been prevented if Pence and state officials had acted faster. The study received financial support from the federal government.
This is the man now in charge of trying to contain the coronavirus.
