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.