I don't think it would be crazy—from a purely strategic standpoint, notwithstanding the health risk—for Harris to put her foot down and say leaders need to take COVID seriously and she won't debate in person until Pence is out of the quarantine period.

And by the way, from a health standpoint: we are not talking about some trivial risk. Literally half the people around Pence in this POLITICO illustration got COVID. The negative tests and lack of symptoms reduce the chance, but it's still decently high. https://www.politico.com/news/2020/10/02/trump-timeline-activities-425041

Harris is a good debater (though Pence isn't bad) and I guess you don't wanna take chances when you're 8-9 points ahead. But the public buys the message that Trump/Pence have been deeply irresponsible on COVID and one way to highlight that is by actually following the CDC rules.

I guess I'm going on a mini rant here, but this is not some borderline case. It is the very opposite of that! Pence had close personal contact per the CDC definition without masks on with like 10 people that are COVID+.

It is also unlikely that the contact ended at the ACB ceremony 9 days ago (still in the quarantine period anyway), since the White House was clearly taking COVID completely unseriously until Thursday or Friday, which is not imply that they're taking it seriously now.