Your Economy (No Politics)

[Ayock]

In a rambling press conference that displayed his utter lack of knowledge about public health, Trump announced that he has appointed Mike Pence to lead the administration’s task force for responding to the coronavirus outbreak. He praised Mike Pence’s previous experience handling public health issues, saying “he has a certain talent for this”.

As governor of Indiana, Mike Pence enabled the worst HIV outbreak in his state’s history and actively blocked a policy that would have contained the crisis. He slashed public health funding, which forced HIV testing centers to close, and then took nearly three months to allow a temporary needle exchange to stem the crisis. And now this man is in charge of handling an outbreak of global proportions.

Meanwhile, Trump continues to downplay the scale of the outbreak in direct contradiction to experts’ warnings, and Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar has refused to say that an eventual vaccine will be affordable to everyone. The sheer incompetence of this administration continues to shake me to my core.

Robert Reich