While the coronavirus threat dominated the news cycle last week — affecting everything from world markets to the border and national security — it was just a matter of time before the possible global pandemic became politicized.

Falling along party lines, tweets were flying as fast as the market tick-down on Wall Street.

New York City Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez brought a quick response from conservatives after tweeting that Vice President Mike Pence, point man for the President’s coronavirus task force, does not believe in science.

“It is utterly irresponsible to put him in charge of U.S. coronavirus response as the world sits on the cusp of a pandemic,” said AOC. “This decision could cost people their lives. Pence’s past decisions already have.”

Dan Bongino, conservative commentator and former Secret Service agent, fired off a quick response.

“As with most words used by AOC, they don’t mean what she thinks they mean,” he tweeted. “There are a lot of ignoramuses in Congress, but AOC is assuredly taking it to a new level. How embarrassing,” he replied.

Rep. Dan Crenshaw, a House Republican and former Navy SEAL, said some Democrats lied about the president’s response to coronavirus.

He targeted billionaire Mike Bloomberg, a contender for the Democratic nomination, who ran ads saying that Centers for Disease Control and Prevention funding was cut.

Conservative activist Charlie Kirk criticized Sen. Elizabeth Warren for introducing a bill to redirect funds from border security to fight the coronavirus. Kirk tweeted that three Chinese nationals were apprehended trying to cross our Southern border illegally and each had flulike symptoms. The weak border, he said, is a health risk and needed to be closed.

“She wants to open the border to stop the spread of a pandemic?” Kirk asked. “Democrats are politicizing a global health crisis just to own Trump. They hate him more than they love America.”

Katie Pavlich, another strong conservative commentator, tweeted that “Democrats were tougher on Trump for his coronavirus response than they’ve been on China, whose communist government censored and hid the outbreak, leading to its unnecessary spread around the world.”

Conservative hard-liner Mark R. Levin also weighed in, tweeting that he’s waiting for the Schumer-Pelosi-Sanders-Biden- Buttigieg-Warren-Klobuchar-Steyer coronavirus plan.

Marsha Blackburn, Republican senator from Tennessee who serves on the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee and the Senate Armed Services Committee, has been warning about this nation’s dependence on China for medications. Blackburn cited Dr. Janet Woodcock, the director of the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, who told Congress last October that the United States “has become a world leader in drug discovery and development, but is no longer in the forefront of drug manufacturing.”

Blackburn said Woodcock identified as a key health and security concern the cessation of U.S. manufacturing of active pharmaceutical ingredients, the basic building blocks of medications. She testified that 72 percent of API manufacturing takes place outside the U.S., and that the number of facilities making APIs in China has more than doubled since 2010.

We understand that China is this country’s largest trading partner but it’s startling to learn how dependent we’ve become on Chinese pharmaceuticals.

Don’t expect congress to take any action on this vulnerability any time soon. Trump Derangement Syndrome has infected too many Democratic House members who will avoid — like the plague — taking on any bipartisan measures that would make the president look good in an election year.

By Jim Zbick | tneditor@tnonline.com