The governor tried to qualify his comments, saying, “I do appreciate it’s better to err on the side of being safe.” But he also said he was “being only slightly facetious.”

Then he doubled down. “But it does concern me a little bit that in America — on this and any number of other fronts — we’re sending messages to our young people that if life is hard, you can curl up in the fetal position somewhere in a warm place and just wait until it stops being hard,” he said.