In March 2020, Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick raised eyebrows when he suggested that grandparents should be willing to expose themselves to the novel coronavirus COVID- 19 and die to save the economy for their children and grandchildren. At the time, the coronavirus outbreak was spreading through the United States and impacting every aspect of life: closing schools and businesses, forcing people out of work, overwhelming hospitals, and killing agonizing numbers of people. Yet even though families were experiencing death and devastation, much attention was on the stock market. “I don’t want the whole country to be sacrificed,” Patrick said [in an interview with Fox News]. “I’ve talked to hundreds of people . . . and everyone says pretty much the same thing: ‘We can’t lose our whole country. We’re having an economic collapse.’ ”2 Former Wells Fargo Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Dick Kovacevich, echoed this same sentiment just a few days later, saying, “We’ll gradually bring those people back and see what happens. Some of them will get sick, some may even die, I don’t know.”3 In this twisted logic, people should be willing to die or be sacrificed, “so the stock market can live.”4

020年3月，得克萨斯州副州长丹·帕特里克（Dan Patrick）建议祖父母应该愿意让自己暴露在新型冠状病毒COVID-19之下，为子孙后代拯救经济而死，这引起了人们的不满。当时，冠状病毒疫情正在美国蔓延，影响到生活的方方面面：关闭学校和企业，迫使人们失业，医院人满为患，大量人丧生。然而，尽管家庭正经历着死亡和毁灭，股市还是引起了人们的极大关注。帕特里克（在接受福克斯新闻网采访时）说：“我不想牺牲整个国家。“我和几百人谈过。每个人都说同样的话：“我们不能失去整个国家。富国银行（Wells Fargo）前首席执行官迪克•科瓦切维奇（Dick Kovacevich）几天后也表达了同样的观点，他说：“我们会逐渐让这些人回来，看看会发生什么。他们中有些人会生病，有些人甚至会死，我不知道。“3在这个扭曲的逻辑中，人们应该愿意死或被牺牲”，这样股市才能活下去