Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick argued that he and other seniors were willing to die to save the American economy.
"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?' And if that is the exchange, I'm all in," Patrick told Fox News on Monday.
"My messages is that let's get back to work, let's get back to living,” he said. “Let's be smart about it and those of us who are 70+, we'll take care of ourselves. But don't sacrifice the country."
Trump pushing to reopen economy:
“Our public health experts, who are terrific, are studying the variation and the disease across the country, and we will be using data to recommend new protocols to allow local economies to cautiously resume their activity at the appropriate time,” Trump said during a news conference on Monday.
“Our country wasn’t built to be shut down,” he said. “This is not a country that was built for this.”
Trump said he wanted to reopen the economy within a matter of weeks, not months.
"America will again, and soon, be open for business," Trump said. “This was a medical problem. We are not going to let it turn into a long-lasting financial problem."
Medical experts disagree:
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the top infectious disease expert in the country, is urging officials to push back on Trump’s plan.
“It would be a major mistake to suggest any change of course when it comes to containment,” Sen. Lindsey Graham told The Washington Post. “I just spoke with Dr. Fauci — he believes that, if anything, we should be more aggressive and do more . . . You can’t have a functioning economy if you have hospitals overflowing. People aren’t going to go to work like that.”
Former FDA Commissioner Scott Gotlieb said “it should not be lost on anyone that there's no such thing as a functioning economy and society so long as COVID-19 continues to spread uncontrolled in our biggest cities."
"So long as COVID-19 spreads uncontrolled, older people will die in historic numbers, middle aged folks doomed to prolonged ICU stays to fight for their lives, hospitals will be overwhelmed, and most Americans terrified to leave homes, eat out, take the subway, or go to the park," he explained. "There are two ways to end this. Let a vast swath of people catch COVID which is unthinkable, or break the epidemic. We must choose the latter."
