Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman recently penned a blistering column for the New York Times in which he issued a dire warning to the American public regarding the next four months that Trump has to his name to finish out his presidency. And let me just say now — We best heed this warning.
Krugman notes in his piece that Trump is behaving as though this nation’s health crisis is now suddenly a thing of the past, little more than a distant memory, despite the fact that infection rates are on a rapid uptick, with the country experiencing its highest infection rates in a single day earlier this week, and it’s something we should seriously be concerned about.
He went on to note that Vice President Mike Pence recently wrote an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal in which the VP declared “There Isn’t a Coronavirus ‘Second Wave’.”
Krugman explains that he was absolutely flabbergasted by Donald Trump’s administration’s “delusions and magical thinking that have marked every step of the Trump administration’s response to Covid-19.”
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The award-winning economist used Pence’s article as an example of the administration’s attempts to paint the pandemic as over and done with while brutally pointing out that states such as Florida and Texas are still seeing massive explosions of infections as they rapidly reopen their states according to Donald Trump’s premature plans.
Krugman goes on to note that the reignited infection rates really came as no surprise, as many states were quick to follow along with Trump’s ideas and gimmicks and refused to mandate face coverings, despite the strong recommendations of legitimate health officials.
“When Donald Trump declared that we would ‘transition to greatness’ — which is to say, rush to reopen the economy despite a still-rampant pandemic — epidemiologists warned that this could set off a new wave of infections. They were right,” his column blistered. “And economists warned that while relaxing social distancing would lead to a brief period of job growth, these gains would be short-lived, that premature reopening would be self-defeating even in economic terms. They were also right.”
The economist goes on to explain that the reignited infection rates will soon result in mass shutdowns once again, which will completely destroy what little amount of economic growth we’ve seen over the last few weeks.
“As a result, unemployment, still in double digits, probably won’t get much better for a long time,” he warned.
“We’re in worse shape, even economically, than we would have been if Trump and his allies had taken the pandemic seriously early on,” Krugman penned, before adding, “The really frightening aspect about where we are is that Trump and his people don’t seem to have learned anything from their coronavirus debacle. On Wednesday — Wednesday! — Trump insisted, as he has at every stage of the pandemic, that the coronavirus will ‘sort of just disappear.'”
“The sad, even terrifying thing is that Trumpian delusions of success will impose a heavy price on the rest of us,” he wrote after calling on the United States government to make a full-scale effort to finally combat this virus properly.
“Infections and hospitalizations will soar further, and millions of Americans will lose crucial economic lifelines in a few weeks,” Krugman scathed before issuing his final, blood-curdling prediction:
“The next four months are going to be very, very ugly.”
You can read Krugman’s full column here.
Featured image via Wikimedia Commons/Gage Skidmore “, under Creative Commons license 2.0″
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