Nirav Shah has just begun running a campaign commercial advising Maine residents to worry about a pandemic 7,000 miles away.
The obvious question is what does this have to do with … Maine?
The obvious answer is absolutely nothing.
Maybe Shah is trying to bring attention to his wholly incompetent management of a pandemic in a place he once worked – Illinois, a record of failure he later brought to Maine’s COVID response.
“Is the United States prepared for this situation?” he asks, referring to the Congo. “The answer is no. President Trump has gutted our public health infrastructure. We are not ready for the next pandemic.”
“Public health leadership in the United States is non-existent.”
Shah’s “public health leadership” was famously AWOL when he was director of the Illinois Department of Public Health in 2015 as an outbreak of Legionnaires’ disease resulted in 13 deaths and 74 infections at the Illinois Veterans Home.
He was among several Illinois officials heavily criticized for their response to the outbreak, and a 2019 state audit report of the incident indicated that the Illinois CDC did not visit the facility until nearly two weeks into the outbreak.
Shah insisted that the agency followed all federal guidelines and moved quickly.
Illinois U.S. senators Dick Durbin and Tammy Duckworth called for Shah’s resignation, but he remained in his position until the governor who appointed him lost his re-election bid in 2018.
The state of Illinois six years ago reached a $6.4 million settlement agreement with several families of veterans who died in the outbreak.
After Democrat Gov. Janet Mills appointed Shah as disease-control director in 2019, he became a media darling of the legacy press because of his unending series of “news conferences.”
Polls now show he’s the leading Democrat candidate for governor, but based on what?
Maybe on the popularity of Fritz, the German shepherd he introduces at the top of his Ebola alert?
Certainly not on his record managing pandemics.
The question really is whether Shah is able to protect Maine (and Fritz) from himself, let alone from Ebola in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Republican gubernatorial candidate Bobby Charles last fall first raised Shah’s alleged incompetent handling of the COVID-19 pandemic in Maine, accusing him of using emergency powers to lock down the state and impose harsh mandates that he said damaged education, health care, and families.
Charles, now the leading GOP gubernatorial candidate, said at the time that Shah kept Maine “paralyzed long after the science said otherwise.”
He blamed Shah for school closures, learning loss, and a youth mental health crisis.
So sure, Shah would rather talk about the Congo. Or Fritz.
Anything but his complete failure managing pandemics.
STFU. Shah for prison. Or go back to Illinois, Dr. Legionaire’s Loser.