While Pence did horribly with the AIDS crisis, it’s important to understand the context of his decisions. He was (is) a staunch social conservative to the point he shut down Planned Parenthood clinics and prohibited needle exchanges out of fears it encouraged drug users.
However, even he reversed his decision and strayed from his zeal when it got really bad.
As for Covid-19, there is far less stigma around patients than there ever was around patients with AIDS (Pence being a homophobe doesn’t help)
I bet Pence would definitely try to ramp up testing and encourage social distancing.
He would not shut down certain areas in time for the crisis to be managed due to wanting to keep the economy open. However, like in Indiana, he would likely reverse course when it looked like an emergency and declare a national shutdown.
I say we would resemble Britain in terms of the case curve by now (ofc we would have more cases because of population differences) But would be at high risk for an even worse second wave come fall.
A weird thing is that even with Britain's curve having flattened, they almost certainly have more deaths per capita than the US does. I wonder why that is-maybe it's just greater population density? In any case, the US with President Pence would do much better than Britain has done on a per capita basis.
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