Earlier quoted context omitted.
Misspelling a variable on the lhs of an assignment just causes a new variable to be created with the new name. That's a lot worse in my book.
I dont think that's the same kind of thing. Your example is a tradeoff that anyone who uses a language that doesn't require explicit variable declaration faces, and it's pretty tough to argue such languages really shouldn't exist. Missing an operator resulting in explicit behavior is much more subtle and not even obvious behavior. For those who use python, it is worse.
"Shouldn't exist" is too strong.
Dynamic languages that let you create a new variable via assignment shouldn't be used to create non-trivial software. How about that?
Scripting languages have a place. That place is 100% in creating quick-and-dirty scripts and tools. Or in doing some kind of one-off data transform (as is common in machine learning scenarios). Anything that has a life span of two weeks or less, or a code length of fewer than a hundred lines? Yeah, script languages rock for that.
Explicit/static typing adds vastly more value to large projects than the cost of the overhead. The fact that you can't really gain that value in Python means that Python should be relegated to quick and dirty scripts.
Same for JavaScript, Ruby, and other completely dynamic languages.
You'll note that all of these languages are getting types one way or another, meaning that there are a lot of people who do recognize their value. Though TypeScript is years ahead of the rest in the completeness and sophisticated of its type system; bugs like the comma bug detailed by OP, along with simply every JavaScript "wat" bug, simply can't happen in TypeScript in strict mode. And static types enables entire other categories of bugs to be detectable via a linter as well.