Why Is Anyone Listening to Dr. Phil Give Coronavirus Advice?

It’s never been clearer, to me at least, that Dr. Phil is not a medical doctor than listening to him talk about how coronavirus measures don’t make sense because there are automobile deaths every year and we don’t shut the country down. I didn’t know that automobile deaths were also contagious! Probably could have saved my grandmother’s life if we kept her inside and didn’t let her catch that contagious disease, right?

First, let’s start with Dr. Phil choosing to go on Laura Ingraham’s show on Fox News—already a mistake. But he did it and talked about how he thought all of the social distancing measures were a mistake, and people who don’t know Dr. Phil’s actual doctorate is in psychology or how he cannot actually practice psychology because he lost his license back in 2006 might think he has any more idea what he’s talking about than any other pundit. I assure you, he does not.

He can still call himself Dr. Phil, but that’s beside the point. Here’s what he said about the coronavirus issue:

Dr. Phil appears on Laura Ingraham and says we don’t shut the country down for automobile deaths, cigarette related deaths, and swimming pool deaths pic.twitter.com/q8KCgLLClY

— Acyn Torabi (@Acyn) April 17, 2020

Dr. Phil decided to share his non-medical doctor thoughts and his non-economist thoughts on the economy and why people should be allowed to go back to work, saying,

250,000 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. 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.

All that “insight” despite that he is not even licensed to give advice in his own chosen field. That is very obvious because he thinks car crashes and drowning are both the equivalent of a highly contagious virus. I, myself, am not a medical doctor; I can just read.

So my question now is why are we asking people like Dr. Phil and Dr. Oz for their advice? Is it because of the “doctor” in their title? In that case, let’s just ask anyone who has a doctorate, regardless of field, right? Sure, I guess Dr. Oz is technically a medical doctor who was a heart surgeon, but he also thinks that we should let schools reopen because he completely misunderstood some numbers he read and thinks the increased loss of life would be worth it. So again, I ask, why are we listening to them?

I guess people just want doctors to lie to them right now instead of telling us what we need to do so we’re all safe. Why listen to Dr. Anthony Fauci, who is the director of the National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Disease, when we can listen to a non-licensed psychologist and a heart surgeon who many doctors think is dangerous for the advice he gives on his show?

(image: screengrab)

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