A lack of seriousness

Is Pence a good choice to lead the US response to the new virus?

“Mike is not a czar,” Trump said. “I don’t view Mike as a czar.”

Pence is not a public health expert, either. Instead, as governor of Indiana, he slashed public health spending and delayed the introduction of needle exchanges, which led to the state’s worst outbreak of HIV.

So he’s not just not a good choice, he’s a specifically bad choice, one with a record of fucking up government response to a contagious disease. Swell.

Yale epidemiologist Gregg Gonsalves, who conducted the research linking the Indiana HIV outbreak to Pence’s policies, tweeted that the decision “speaks to a lack of seriousness by the White House.”

And a lack of competence, and a lack of giving a damn.

Pence also has a history of downplaying the link between smoking and lung cancer, writing in a 2000 op-ed that “despite the hysteria from the political class and the media, smoking doesn’t kill.”

How is it that he’s not earning a huge salary working for Big Tobacco?

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