Kirk Cousins is concerned about winning football games. The impact of coronavirus? Not so much. The Vikings quarterback does not believe wearing a mask works in preventing the spread of COVID-19 and said, in an interview on Spotify’s “10 questions With Kyle Brandt” podcast, that “If I die, I die.”
Cousins did make it clear he respects that others are concerned about the virus and that he isn’t trying to dismiss how they feel. “I want to respect what other people’s concerns are,” Cousins said. “For me personally, just talking no one else can get the virus, what is your concern if you could get it, I would say I’m gonna go about my daily life. If I get it, I’m gonna ride it out. I’m gonna let nature do its course. Survival-of-the-fittest kind of approach. And just say, if it knocks me out, it knocks me out. I’m going to be OK. You know, even if I die. If I die, I die. I kind of have peace about that. … So that’s really where I fall on it, so my opinion on wearing a mask is really about being respectful to other people. It really has nothing to do with my own personal thoughts.”
Brandt,  who appeared Wednesday on “Purple Daily” on SKOR North, said he talked to Cousins a few weeks back on his podcast. Cousins’ comments, according to Brandt, became a bit of a roller coaster. Brandt, at one point, asked Cousins to rate his level of concern over getting the virus on a 1-to-10 scale. One would be “the person who says, ‘Masks are stupid, you’re all a bunch of lemmings.'” Ten would be, “I’m not leaving my master bathroom for the next 10 years.”
Cousins said he was not “gonna call anybody stupid, for the trouble it would get me in,” but then acknoweldged, “I’m about a .000001.”
Cousins acknowledged that some of his teammates probably feel the same and others don’t. “I even think within the building, there’s gonna be a dichotomy of people who couldn’t care less about the virus, have no concern about it, have never lost a minute of sleep about it,” he said. “And then you get people on the other side of the spectrum who, every second of every day, they’re consumed with fear about it. What you don’t know is who’s where on the spectrum when you first go back.”