——–

Democrats, mainstream media journalists, and liberal commentators (but I repeat myself) love dunking on Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) when they think there’s a failure in his handling of the Wuhan virus outbreak that they can exploit, and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman is no exception.

The Nobel prizing-winning Krugman, who just two months ago smeared Reopen protesters by claiming the ‘stay at home’ marches were nothing more than dangerous Potemkin village schemes “staged by right-wing billionaires”, took to the Twitter machine on Sunday to declare the country’s alleged national pandemic response “disastrous, in one picture.” The picture was a graphic of the rising case numbers out of Florida, and also included a swipe at National Review for their call for critics to apologize to DeSantis:

America's disastrous pandemic response, in one picture pic.twitter.com/EDxktnqQos

— Paul Krugman (@paulkrugman) June 21, 2020

There are helluva lot of problems with this idiotic hot take, most notably the fact that responses to the pandemic were coordinated more at the state level in each state more so than the federal level. This was and is how it should be, considering every state’s situation is different. So his description of the graphic as “America’s response” was completely bogus.

Not only that, but in contrast to Florida’s calculated response, New York’s was a disaster – so much so that even Krugman’s own liberally biased newspaper torched NY Gov. Andrew Cuomo and NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio in two detailed investigative pieces noting how their failure to coordinate a coherent and unified strategy early on to combat the virus not only enabled its spread throughout the state, but also throughout the country.

Left-leaning groups like Pro Publica have also taken Cuomo to the woodshed for his handling of the Wuhan virus outbreak in his state.

Simply put, our country is still in the middle of a pandemic in large part thanks to Cuomo’s and de Blasio’s failures, not any alleged mistakes made by DeSantis. Also, there’s the matter of the George Floyd protests that happened over a period of 3 weeks, which may be playing a significant role in the rise in cases in certain states.

Twitter users were understandably upset with Krugman’s “analysis”, and let him have it. AG Hamilton led the way:

These people are so dishonest that it's exhausting. Even with FL's recent spike, they are doing better than most states. Meanwhile, Krugman is openly praising the 3 Governors with the worst response records in the country:https://t.co/Icclg0J5gs https://t.co/h7f5FPKM9S

— (((AG))) (@AGHamilton29) June 21, 2020

For comparison as of June 19th, death rates per 100K:

Michigan- 61
New York- 159
New Jersey- 145
Florida- 14https://t.co/3JVn09F4ue

% of nursing home residents killed:

MI-5%
NY- 6%
NJ- 12%
FL- 1.6%https://t.co/Y1wf5U2wIU

— (((AG))) (@AGHamilton29) June 21, 2020

Do you have any idea how long FL would have to spike to face nearly the disaster of the states whose Governors Krugman pretends did a great job?

And at least on nursing homes, that difference can be tied directly to policies from those Governors.

— (((AG))) (@AGHamilton29) June 21, 2020

In addition, they can't point to specific policies from DeSantis to blame the recent spike on. They freaked out over beaches, but those opened nearly 2 months ago. Re-opening began in early May. Neither of those can be correlated to the recent spike (over last week).

— (((AG))) (@AGHamilton29) June 21, 2020

We are now seeing spikes in states that never really had a big outbreak before the lockdowns. Most of those spikes started over last 2-3 weeks. That doesn't correlate to re-openings. It does match up w/ protests, but not necessarily protest locations.

— (((AG))) (@AGHamilton29) June 21, 2020

My personal hypothesis is that the actual virus spread at the protests might not have been as bad as possible, but seeing massive protests being sanctioned by pols and health officials led to a significant decrease in social distancing everywhere. Now we are seeing consequences.

— (((AG))) (@AGHamilton29) June 21, 2020

The good news is that death rates continue to decline thus far. It could be that they are just lagging, but another possibility is that the people getting it now are low risk and we are doing a better job treating the virus and protecting at-risk populations.

— (((AG))) (@AGHamilton29) June 21, 2020

There is also this:

What could’ve happened at the end of May to lead to so many increased cases??? pic.twitter.com/vK6frupDmo

— Gomes (@GomesBolt) June 21, 2020

That's why we are all so proud of the way your newspaper denounced the BLM marches with the same vigor they denounce Trump rallies.

The coverage of the Juneteenth marches was savage! What courage you showed!

— Voltaire's Return (@ReturnVoltaire) June 21, 2020

To date, Krugman has not even once acknowledged Cuomo’s and de Blasio’s culpability, nor did he smear George Floyd protesters as dangers to public health as he did Reopen marchers and Tulsa rally attendees. This is just more evidence that this supposedly respectable liberal simply cannot and should not be taken seriously.

(Hat tip: Twitchy)

Related –>> Paul Krugman Gets Hilariously Hoisted by His Own Petard After Joining Movement to Cancel Prof for WrongThink