I think you're ignoring how for some of us, gradual typing, is a far better experience than languages with static types.
For example what I like about PHPStan (tacked on static analysis through comments), that it offers so much flexibility when defining type constraints. Can even specify the literal values a function accepts besides the base type. And subtyping of nested array structures (basically support for comfortably typing out the nested structure of a json the moment I decode it).
Not ignoring, I just didn't write an essay. In all that time working with TypeScript there was very little that I found to be gradually typed, it was either nothing or everything, hence my original comment. Sure some things might throw in a bunch of any/unknown types but those were very much the rarity and often some libraries were using incredibly complicated type definitions to make them as tight as possible.
Worked with python, typescript and now php, seems that phpstan allows this gradual typing, while typescript kinda forces you to start with strict in serious projects.