If you watched Wednesday’s press briefing about the hantavirus outbreak, you would have seen Dr. Brian Christine, Donald Trump’s unqualified and unfit assistant secretary for health, boasting about dealing with the outbreak with an approach “grounded in science” and with “experienced professional[s]” with “a shared commitment to protecting the American people.”
Um, not really. Thanks to CNN investigative reporter Andy Kaczynski, we’ve learned a lot about Dr. Christine, and not one bit of it signals anything close to what he’s claiming the Trump/RFK Jr. public health team will provide.
For one thing, the anti-trans Christine is a right-wing extremist with almost no experience in public health. “Before he joined the Trump administration last year, Christine was an Alabama-based urologist who specialized in penile implants. He has little public health experience and a history of far-right commentary and promoting conspiracy theories,” Kaczynski said.
But wait, it gets worse. “He’s said the Covid pandemic led to a wider government plot to control people, compared the Biden administration to Nazi Germany, and suggested the Covid vaccine had little effect in stopping the pandemic," Kaczynski also found. Not surprisingly, Christine is another 2020 election conspiracy theorist and has expressed support for efforts to overturn the results.
He’s also an anti-abortion zealot in favor of bans without exceptions for rape or incest. He is now in charge of offices responsible for family planning, women’s health, and infectious disease policy as well as the public health officers deployed during public health emergencies, Kaczynski noted.
Nevertheless, Christine announced on Wednesday that the Andes variant of the hantavirus infecting the cruise ship passengers “does not spread easily and it requires prolonged close contact with someone who is already symptomatic. Even so, [we took it] very seriously from the very start.”
Feeling sick yet?
