Mike Pence, Who Enabled a Massive HIV Outbreak As Governor, Is Handling U.S. Coronavirus Response

If you’re getting a little bit anxious about the coronavirus coming for all the beards, don’t worry, our government’s got this under control. That’s because Donald Trump has delegated the task of dealing with a rapidly evolving global crisis to a guy who really knows a thing or two about how to contain a virus: Mike Pence.

Perhaps you remember that before Pence was VP, he was the governor of Indiana, where his signature achievement was enabling an HIV crisis so severe that at its height, 20 new cases were being diagnosed each week.

This was thanks to a series of moronic decisions on Pence’s part: The first was his role in defunding Planned Parenthood, which led to the closure of the only HIV testing center in Scott County in 2013.

By 2015, the county had a major problem: Residents were sharing needles, no one was getting tested, and Pence spent several months blocking life-saving needle exchanges on moral grounds. By the time the outbreak was under control it had spiraled: nearly 200 new cases had been diagnosed under Pence’s watch.

So this is the guy who’s going to steer us from a disease that’s on the brink of becoming a pandemic. Sweet. Here’s the reaction from Yale epidemiologist Gregg Gonsalves, who I think speaks for us all:

As Trump himself put it: “We’re doing really well and Mike is going to be in charge and Mike will report back to me, but he’s got a certain talent for this.”