The Texas Restaurant Association says restaurant shutdowns in Dallas and Harris counties alone will have a projected loss of up to half a million jobs in the state’s restaurant industry...they project “25 to 30 percent of independent restaurants will close if the reduction in patrons continues”.

They says that there are 1.4 million people employed in the Texas restaurant industry, and with restrictions in place, 1 million of those jobs could be lost.

Should we be completely destroying the economy over the coronavirus?

Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick says ultimately we can’t can’t ‘sacrifice the country’ to combat the coronavirus so we give it a few more days or weeks then “let’s go back to work and go back to living”.

He says as a 70-year-old, he would be willing to “take a chance on” survival in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic if it means ensuring a prosperous country for future generations of Americans.

He told Tucker Carlson: (h/t transcript from Grabien):

Patrick: I turned 70 next week and I sent a note about a week ago that something has been really heavy on my heart since this started, so I am automatically in the higher risk pool. Has governor, I work over 15 hours a day mostly from home but I travel when I need to. I am living smart listening to the president, the CDC guidelines like all people should, but I am not living in fear of covid-19. But I’m living in fear of is what’s happening to th country. No one reached out to me and said as a senior citizen, are you willing to take a chance on your survival and exchange for keeping the America that America loves for its children and grandchildren? And if that is the exchange, I’m all in. And that doesn’t make me noble or brave, I just think there are lots of grandparents out there in this country, six grandchildren that what we all care about and 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. I’ve talked to hundreds of people just in the last week and making calls all the time and everyone says pretty much the same thing, that we can’t lose our whole country. We are having an economic collapse. I’m also a small businessman and I understand it, I talked to business people all the time and my heart is lifted tonight by what I heard the president same because we can do more than one thing at a time. We can do two things. So my messages that let’s get back to work, let’s get back to living and be smart about it and those of us who are 70 plus, we will take care of ourselves but don’t sacrifice the country. Don’t do that.

Tucker: You are basically saying that this disease could take your life but that’s not the scariest thing to you. They were something that would be worse than dying.

Patrick: Yes. I’m going to do everything I can to live but if you said are you willing to take the chance and if I get sick, I’ll go and try to get better but if I don’t, I don’t and I’m not trying to think of any kind of morbid way, I’m just saying that we’ve got a choice here and we are going to be in a total collapse, recession, depression collapse in our society of this goes on another several months, there won’t be any Jobs to come back to for many people. So I’m going to be smart, all of my fellow grandparents out there going to be smart from what we want to live with our grandchildren as long as we can but the point is our biggest gift we give to our country and our children and our grandchildren is the legacy of our country and right now, that is at risk and I feel like as the president said, the mortality rate is so low, do we have to shut down the whole country for this? I think we can get back to work and we should wait out his time and if he says we need another week, I trust his judgment but we have to have the time. We can’t say in three months or six months or 12 months. These businesses can’t wait that long.

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