HOUSTON – Texas’ Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick says he would risk his life if it meant the economy could be started again, as global stock markets reel from the closures and chaos of the coronavirus pandemic.
Patrick’s interview by Fox News’ Tucker Carlson is being shared rapidly on Twitter Monday night.
“You know Tucker, no one reached out to me and said, ‘As a senior citizen, are you willing to take a chance on your survival, in exchange for keeping the America that all America loves for your children and grandchildren?’” he said. “And if that’s the exchange, I’m all in.”
People over the age of 65 are well documented to be the most vulnerable population being devastated by COVID-19 around the globe. In Washington state, a cluster of cases in a nursing home led to dozens of deaths. In fact, most of the people who died due to coronavirus in the U.S. so far were over the age of 60 and health officials have said older adults are twice as likely to have a serious illness from novel coronavirus.
He went on to say that this was important for him as a grandparent.
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“That doesn’t make me noble or brave or anything like that. I just think there are lots of grandparents out there in this country like me — I have six grandchildren — that what we all care about and what we love more than anything are those children," he said. “I want to live smart and see through this, but I don’t want the whole country to be sacrificed, and that’s what I see.”
Patrick claimed he’d talked to hundreds of people in the last week.
“They all say the same thing: We can’t lose our whole country. We’re having an economic collapse. I’m also a small businessman. I understand it. And I talk with business people all the time."
Advocating for work to resume, Patrick said the next moves needed to be “smart.”
“My message is that ‘Lets get back to work. Let’s get back to living. Let’s be smart about it. And those of us who are 70-plus, we’ll take care of ourselves. But don’t sacrifice the country. Don’t do that.'”
“So you’re basically saying that this disease could take your life but that’s not the scariest thing to you? There’s something that would be worse than dying,” Carlson jumped in to clarify.
“Yeah,” Patrick said.
Watch the clip below:
Tx Lt Gov Dan Patrick says grandparents would be willing to die to save the economy for their grandchildren pic.twitter.com/wC3Ngvtsbj
— Andrew Lawrence (@ndrew_lawrence) March 24, 2020