Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/02/28/man-who-let-major-hiv-outbreak.html
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Bernie Sanders to Mike Pence: Is the Coronavirus Going to Catch Your Prayer Hands Like the Last Epidemic You Faced?
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Shades of Reagan and the AIDS crisis too. I guess we have to wait for a reality star to die of coronavirus, then the president will want to do something.
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We need to remember the priorities here: there’s an election this fall and the only thing that Republicans have to offer to the public is that the stock market is roaring along. Anything that might drop the market [1] would be existentially bad for the Administration.
[1] What is it now – Dow -2600 or so since Monday?
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I would love to say this headline is snarky, but it is actually perfectly accurate. Stupid timeline.
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In China, the epidemic was also mishandled due to Xi Jiping’s cult of personality, where loyalty and party line was the priority over truth and science. It’s almost like there’s a downside to autocrats or something.
There will be a lot of historical comparisons between the two, as a way of explaining our (possibly collapsed) civilizations.
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I don’t know. Thoughts and prayers have done sooo much to help stop mass shootings.
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Maybe it makes sense. Maybe he won’t make the same mistake twice.
I worked at a welding shop as a helper when I was a teenager and I forgot to chain up a cylinder of some gas. The cylinder was knocked over and the top broke off and it was a scary. I never made that mistake again.
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It’s so cute when you’re that innocent! 
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Sadly, no. Because from his perspective, he didn’t make a mistake.
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Everyone who lives in one says they’re great
Good thing it wasn’t acetylene. “How do you know?” you ask. Simple – you’re here posting.
As the great Demotivator puts it, “It hurts to admit you made a mistake, but if the mistake is big enough it only hurts for a minute.”
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I do envy the talent pool from which the U.S. public service can draw. If the experts are left to do their jobs then there’s going to be a best case response and I strongly doubt any attempts to muzzle your scientists will even start to work.
In Ontario, we have not forgotten SARS and so far so good. The newspaper editorials today are communicating firm but careful and reasonable public health advice.
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I don’t think we should be comparing this to an HIV outbreak. We have no reason at all to think Mike Pence bungled or mishandled an HIV outbreak.
Mike Pence didn’t care if people died during an HIV outbreak.
I’d put the odds Pence bungles this at near 100% (most likely by handing it off to political stooges with no knowledge or experience) . But this time any catastrophe will be because of incompetence. I think we should remember Pence’s response to HIV as indifference to human life, not as incompetence.
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Same mistake twice? Was Pence’s HIV/AIDS response a mistake or was it deliberate?
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Any time someone brings up the AIDS epidemic’s beginning I think of one scene and one line. Every time. “Give us a number”. This moment in And the Band Played On signifies perfectly the flaw Of profits over lives.
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Yeah, but maybe he will have different motivations. HIV is the disease caught only by “sinners”.
Corona virus can hit anyone. Even him!
That said, the people on the ground level doing the actual work know what they are doing and will do what they can the best they can.
Unlike China, we don’t have everything on lock down with the internet etc. If there really is some urgent red flag important info, it will be leaked to the media.
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Is that Leslie Nielsen?
edited to add — it’s a shame he’s not around to play Pence in comedies that will be made about the Trump admin.
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This is Mike Pence. For all I know he might see Covid-19 as the manifestation of God’s will, something to bring in the end times, and eventually the rapture.
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