By Paul Krugman
Opinion Columnist
Ron DeSantis, governor of Florida, isn’t stupid. He is, however, ambitious and supremely cynical. So when he says things that sound stupid it’s worth asking why. And his recent statements on Covid-19 help us understand why so many Americans are still dying or getting severely ill from the disease.

The background here is Florida’s unfolding public health catastrophe.

We now have highly effective vaccines freely available to every American who is at least 12 years old. There has been a lot of hype about “breakthrough” infections associated with the Delta variant, but they remain rare, and serious illness among the vaccinated is rarer still. There is no good reason we should still be suffering severely from this pandemic.

But Florida is in the grip of a Covid surge worse than it experienced before the vaccines. More than 10,000 Floridians are hospitalized, around 10 times the number in New York, which has about as many residents; an average of 58 Florida residents are dying each day, compared with six in New York. And the Florida hospital system is under extreme stress.

There’s no mystery about why this has happened. At every stage of the pandemic DeSantis has effectively acted as an ally of the coronavirus, for example by issuing orders blocking businesses from requiring that their patrons show proof of vaccination and schools from requiring masks. More generally, he has helped create a state of mind in which vaccine skepticism flourishes and refusal to take precautions is normalized.
One technical note: Florida’s vaccination rate is well below the rates in the Northeast, but closely matches the national average. But seniors are much more likely to be vaccinated than younger Americans, in Florida as elsewhere; and Florida, of course, has an unusually high number of seniors. Among younger groups the state lags behind the nation as a whole, and even further behind blue states.

So, given these grim developments, one might have expected or at least hoped that DeSantis would reconsider his position. In fact, he has been making excuses — it’s all about the air-conditioning! He has been claiming that any new restrictions would have unacceptable costs for the economy — although Florida’s recent performance looks terrible if you place any value on human life.

Above all, he has been playing the liberal-conspiracy-theory card, with fund-raising letters declaring that the “radical left” is “coming for your freedom.”

So let’s talk about what the right means when it talks about “freedom.” Since the pandemic began, many conservatives have insisted that actions to limit the death toll — social distancing, wearing a mask and now getting vaccinated — should be matters of personal choice. Does that position make any sense?
Well, driving drunk is also a personal choice. But almost everyone understands that it’s a personal choice that endangers others; 97 percent of the public considers driving while impaired by alcohol a serious problem. Why don’t we have the same kind of unanimity on refusing to get vaccinated, a choice that helps perpetuate the pandemic and puts others at risk?
True, many people doubt the science; the link between vaccine refusal and Covid deaths is every bit as real as the link between D.U.I. and traffic deaths, but is less obvious to the naked eye. But why are people on the right so receptive to misinformation on this subject, and so angry about efforts to set the record straight?

My answer is that when people on the right talk about “freedom” what they actually mean is closer to “defense of privilege” — specifically the right of certain people (generally white male Christians) to do whatever they want.

Not incidentally, if you go back to the roots of modern conservatism, you find people like Barry Goldwater defending the right of businesses to discriminate against Black Americans. In the name of freedom, of course. A lot, though not all, of the recent panic about “cancel culture” is about protecting the right of powerful men to mistreat women. And so on.

Once you understand that the rhetoric of freedom is actually about privilege, things that look on the surface like gross inconsistency and hypocrisy start to make sense.

Why, for example, are conservatives so insistent on the right of businesses to make their own decisions, free from regulation — but quick to stop them from denying service to customers who refuse to wear masks or show proof of vaccination? Why is the autonomy of local school districts a fundamental principle — unless they want to require masks or teach America’s racial history? It’s all about whose privilege is being protected.

The reality of what the right means by freedom also, I think, explains the special rage induced by rules that impose some slight inconvenience in the name of the public interest — like the detergent wars of a few years back. After all, only poor people and minority groups are supposed to be asked to make sacrifices.

Anyway, as you watch DeSantis invoke “freedom” to escape responsibility for his Covid catastrophe, remember, when he says it, that word does not mean what you think it means.

Glad the Times nailed it for me, it’s my white Christian male privilege I want to protect. Maybe just maybe I don’t trust the government forcing me to ingest an experimental chemical to stop a flu that I have 98% chance of survival from, if I get it.

No thanks.

quote:

Well, driving drunk is also a personal choice.

These types of arguments are made by people who aren't too bright.

Drunk driving is a personal choice. If you are suspected of drunk driving the police may gather evidence, prove it in a court of law, and then punish the offenders.

We do not stop all people from driving because some of them may be drunk. We do not make all people submit to breathalyzer testing because some of them may be drunk.

All sober drivers are allowed to go about their business until suspected/proven otherwise. Should be the same when it comes to all of this Covid nonsense.

Just another preemptive hit piece by the left.

Elections are coming and the liberals are trying to get ahead of anyone they deem to be a credible conservative candidate.

At some point calling everyone you don’t like “racist” is going to dilute the word and it’s meaning so far that the word will become meaningless.

I’m so sick of the side who counts minorities in search of racism and perpetually fixates on race and skin color calling everything under the sun racist. They need to expand their vocabulary when it comes to things they dislike.

It's Krugman...he's a hack...

He deals in red herrings all the time...

I'll take his Herring and raise him a Cod...abortion. Now that, we know, ends in death 100% of the time. Yet the Dems claim "my-body-my-right."

Goldwater? he had to go back that far to find something to use against R/Conservatives.

Got news pal, its not just R that dislike this, not every D wants to be masked up, or have their businesses ruined because some drunk with power politician makes rules that cause customers to decide that buying it from Beezoos at home requires no mask or shots vs going out into the danger zone.

Maybe he wants us to Think in Russian....

Pokazhi mne svoi dokumenty, pozhaluysta

quote:

By Paul Krugman

Not much point in proceeding past this point.

quote:

Originally posted by stickman428:
At some point calling everyone you don’t like “racist” is going to dilute the word and it’s meaning so far that the word will become meaningless.

We're already there. As one TV personality noted, "When everything is racist, nothing is racist." That's where we find ourselves today. And any 'real' incidents of racism will be met with a shrug and ambivalence given the place we've been drug to by these idiots trotting around screaming racism 24/7/365.

Pure, unadulterated trash.

These people literally think they have a right not to get sick. How can one reason with delusions this deep?

quote:

Originally posted by Balzé Halzé:
These people literally think....

For give me but no they don't. Thought is something they no longer practice. Pure emotion drives every aspect of they lives.

quote:

Originally posted by stickman428:
At some point calling everyone you don’t like “racist” is going to dilute the word ...

Too late. At least for me. I no longer regard the charge of "racism" as having any value at all.

quote:

Originally posted by ensigmatic:
I no longer regard the charge of "racism" as having any value at all.

Nor do I. Nobody should at this point.

When everything is racist, nothing is.

Florida Population: 21.6 Million.
Using this guys hospitalization number: 10K+.
Looks like most Floridians are doing OK, racist or not.

The Dems are throwing out all sorts of buzzwords and boogeymen. Out here, Newsome is facing a recall and Elizabeth Warren pushed-out an ad supporting him, and wouldn't you know it, its' a "Republican scheme" got repeated several times.

quote:

Originally posted by YooperSigs:
Florida Population: 21.6 Million.
Using this guys hospitalization number: 10K+.
Looks like most Floridians are doing OK, racist or not.

To follow that idea further, NY, which Krugman uses as his comparison to FL, has a smaller population than FL by like 2 million people.

So a smaller number of people in NY hospitals might actually be a higher rate of infection than FL with its 2 million extra people.

...but I digress.

And, yes, I almost stopped reading the article when I read the words "Paul Krugman". What a piece of shit.