Dr. Phil slammed for comparing coronavirus deaths to smoking and auto accidents

The Daily Beast

Dr. Phil McGraw was the second Oprah Winfrey-produced celebrity doctor to get in trouble for coronavirus comments, hours after Dr. Oz apologized for suggesting there should be a "trade-off" of reopening schools in exchange for a "2 to 3%" mortality rate. Dr. Phil downplayed coronavirus and cited inaccurate data while speaking to Laura Ingraham on Fox News Thursday night. Dr. Phil, who hasn't held a license to practice psychology since the mid-2000s, advocated for a quick reopening of the economy, arguing that people will die from poverty due to a crashing economy. “And they’re doing that because people are dying from the coronavirus,” he said. “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, but we don’t shut the country down for that. But yet we are doing it for this and the fallout is going to last for years because people’s lives are being destroyed.”