Oprah Winfrey slammed over Dr Oz, Dr Phil's controversial Covid-19 comments about reopening schools and economy
Oprah Winfrey was slammed by Twitter users on Thursday, April 17, as they blamed the legendary show host for providing a platform to Dr Oz and Dr Phil who recently made controversial statements about reopening the US economy amid the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.
The statements made by the TV doctors in different interviews went against the advice given by the top health experts of the country. As both of them made their careers out of the fame they got from appearing on Oprah's show, the host was extensively criticized by people online and even asked to issue a statement denouncing both the personalities.
"Are we finally gonna have an honest assessment of Oprah’s role in unleashing all this quasi-medical metaphysical self-help quackery into the public sphere?" one user wrote, while another said, "Hi @Oprah. Between Oz and Phil, your show has launched some seriously dangerous creeps on our society. Care to address?"
A third wrote, “Oprah must be having such buyer’s remorse for making these random doctors famous right now"
However, there were those who chose to defend her. "Not sure why everyone thinks they need @Oprah to come out against the recent crack-pot statements by Dr Oz and Dr Phil....you have two eyes and ears. Oprah is not responsible for the nonsense they are spewing now and you don't need her to confirm what you already know," the user said.
Appearing as a guest on Fox News' Sean Hannity said that opening up schools for children among a global health crisis was "a very appetizing opportunity." He went on to cite a British medical journal, The Lancet while stating that "the opening of schools may only cost us 2% to 3%, in terms of total mortality."
"Any life is a life lost," Oz continued. "But to get every child back into a school where they are safely being educated, being fed and making the most out of their lives – with the theoretical risks on the backside – that might be a trade-off some folks would consider."
He mentioned that while doctors "continue to look for solutions to beat this virus," children should be urged to go back to studying. "At the same time, I am being asked constantly, 'How will we be able to get people back to their normal lives?" he added. "To do that, one of the important steps will be figuring out, 'How do we get our children safely back to school?'"
After receiving considerable backlash on his comments, Dr Oz took to Twitter to issue an apology. He said that he had realized that "my comments on risks around opening schools have confused and upset people, which was never my intention. I misspoke."
Dr Phil, on the other hand, did an interview with Fox News’ Laura Ingraham on Thursday, where he tried to justify the reopening of the economy by citing annual mortality data for car accidents and swimming pool deaths, which Mediaite later pointed out as inaccurate.
Elaborating on the long-term health risks of extreme isolation, he said, "This is invisible. I can’t show you an X-ray of depression. I can’t show you an X-ray of anxiety. But the fact of the matter is, the longer this lockdown goes on the more vulnerable people get and it’s like there’s a tipping point. There’s a point at which people start having enough problems in lockdown that it will actually create actually more destruction and actually more death across time than the actual virus will itself.”
He added, “Two hundred and fifty people a year die from poverty. The poverty line is getting such that more and more people are going to fall below that because the economy is crashing around us.”
The number he quoted was 1,000 times lower than a 2011 study that put the number closer to 300,000.
Next, he noted, "we have people dying, 45,000 people a year die from automobile accidents,” despite the fact that most recent CDC data for motor vehicle deaths puts the figure at 38,659, a year. Lastly, he said there were 360,000 fatalities from “swimming pool deaths” in the country - a number that was 100 times higher than the nation’s actual unintentional deaths from drowning.
Both Dr Oz and Dr Phil anded their own shows and went onto becoming household names after their respective appearances on 'The Oprah Winfrey Show.'
Oz made his first appearance on the show in 2004 and was introduced as "America’s Doctor,” a moniker he later trademarked. The show allowed him to push a range of questionable health practices, such as the Brazilian spirit medium "John of God.” He launched his own show called 'The Dr Oz Show,' in 2009.
According to Biography, Phil met Oprah in 1996, through his company called Courtroom Sciences, a venture that helped trial lawyers build cases via mock trials, behavioral analysis, jury selection, and mediation. At the time the talk show host was being sued by cattlemen who claimed she defamed the beef industry on one of her episodes.
He became a regular medical expert on her show after helping her win her case in 1998. After spending years advising people on life strategies and relationships he launched his own nationally syndicated series, 'Dr Phil,' in 2002.