American TV psychologist Dr. Phil asked why the economy continues to function as people die from cigarettes, car crashes, and swimming pool drownings, but has shut down for coronavirus.
Dr Phil who is not a medical doctor but has a PhD in psychology went on to compare coronvirus deaths to those who die from poverty and car crashes.
‘Two hundred fifty people a year die from poverty, and the poverty line is getting such that more and more people are going to fall below that because the economy is crashing around us,’ he commented.
‘And they’re doing that because people are dying from the coronavirus, I get that. But look, the fact of the matter is, we have people dying, 45,000 people a year die from automobile accidents, 480,000 from cigarettes, 360,000 a year from swimming pools, we don’t shut the country down for that.
‘But yet we’re doing it for this? And the fallout is going to last for years because people’s lives are being destroyed.’ He added: ‘So we think we’re protecting people’s lives by keeping them locked up. You keep it locked up long enough, there’s a paradoxical effect.
‘You actually destroy more lives than you do by letting them go out and protect themselves and up into their lives to fight for what they believe in.’ Following his TV appearance, viewers took to social media to share their thoughts and many were not happy with Dr Phil’s comments.
Dr. Phil’s comments come after US President Donald Trump gave state governors a road map for how to reopen the economy in a three-phase process, which Dr. Anthony Fauci, the country’s top infectious disease expert helped craft.
Fauci appeared alongside Dr. Phil on the Fox News program to explain the new government guidelines.
Earlier in the week, US President Donald Trump claimed he had total authority to order states to reopen, but later walked back his comments after critics noted that this claim did not have grounding in the US Constitution.
“The president of the United States calls the shots,” Trump said at the time. “They can’t do anything without the approval of the president of the United States.”
Later in the week, Trump changed his tune.
“You’re going to call your own shots,” Trump told the governors Thursday afternoon in a conference call, according to an audio recording obtained by The Associated Press. “We’re going to be standing alongside of you.”
Despite warnings from medical experts, like Fauci, who have said some level of social distancing guidelines may need to remain in place until a vaccine is developed, there are those who remain adamant that the economy should reopen as quickly as possible.
“It is not going to be a light switch that we say, OK, it is now June, July or whatever, click, the light switch goes back on,” Fauci has said. “It’s going to be depending where you are in the country.”
