'Thickheaded' Republicans still don't get what a pandemic is after 140,000 COVID-19 deaths: Paul Krugman

In a Saturday column for the New York Times, Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman raked Republicans over the coals for standing by while Donald Trump and certain select GOP governors ignoring the fact that the coronavirus pandemic is once again growing out of control after already killing over 140,000 Americans.

Under a blunt headline that states, "Republicans Keep Flunking Microbe Economics," the columnist started off by scorching Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida for a "particular piece of thickheadedness" that could help to explain why the Sunshine State has, as he wrote, "become a Covid-19 epicenter, with soaring case totals and a daily death toll now consistently exceeding that of the whole European Union, which has 20 times its population."

Focusing on the Florida Republican's claim that gyms are safe because "if you are in good shape you have a very low likelihood of ending up in a significant condition,” Krugman said DeSantis is dead wrong, writing, "Even healthy people can suffer terribly from Covid-19. And if you’ve ever actually gone to a gym, you know that not everyone there is young and fit."

Using the governor's claim as Exhibit A, Krugman charged, "five months and almost 140,000 deaths into this pandemic, many Republicans still can’t or won’t grasp the point that choices have consequences beyond those to the individual who makes them."

Calling resistance to mandatory mask-wearing championed By Georgia Republican Gov. Brian Kemp as "insane," Krugman said people's personal choices about wearing masks have implications well beyond the belief in freedom of choice -- and used "basic economics" to make his point.

"It’s common sense; it is also, as it happens, basic economics," he wrote. "Econ 101 has lots of good things to say about free markets (probably too many good things, but that’s a discussion for another time), but no rational discussion of economics says that free markets, left to themselves, can solve the problem of 'externalities' — costs that individuals or businesses impose on others who have no say in the matter. Pollution is the classic example of an externality that requires government intervention, but spreading a dangerous virus poses exactly the same issues."

He added, "...many conservatives seem unable or unwilling to grasp this simple point. And they seem equally unwilling to grasp a related point — that there are some things that must be supplied through public policy rather than individual initiative," before concluding, "And the most important of these 'public goods' is probably scientific knowledge."

You can read the whole piece here.