We are all living in strange and dangerous times. We don’t know how long we’ll have to remain quarantined, how long it will take us to find a vaccine for COVID-19 or how we’ll be able to readjust to life once all of this eventually blows over. People are frightened and desperate, justifiably so. They’re willing to listen to anyone who seems like they have a grip on the situation.

Unfortunately, people who act like they know what’s going on all too often have not the faintest idea of what they’re talking about, and in the middle of a deadly pandemic, that can be fatal. Some of the biggest and most famous names in TV medicine have made some very controversial remarks over the past couple of weeks in favor of halting the quarantine, and we’ll be covering some of the most well-known of those remarks today.

Back in March, Dr. Drew Pinsky, addiction specialist and star of Dr. Drew, appeared on a Fox News show, The Ingraham Angle, to tell the tale,  “Essentially, the entire problem we are having is due to panic, not the virus… We have six deaths from COVID-19, 18,000 from the flu. Why isn’t the message, ‘Get your flu vaccine’?'”

The primary issue with this argument is we have a flu vaccine. Our medical community is equipped to deal with the flu, and with proper preparation, we can have a manageable flu season. We are not equipped to deal with COVID-19. It’s referred to as the Novel Coronavirus because it is novel — a newer threat to the world. We have no solid defense against it beyond keeping infected people isolated. We don’t have vaccines or reliable medicines for dealing with these cases. Now, the virus has spread out of control because our government failed to contain it adequately, and we’re all stuck at home. This could have been prevented at one point, but the president failed to heed the warnings of the World Health Organization, the outgoing Obama administration and his own government, and now we’re paying for it.

Much more recently, on April 16, Dr. Phil McGraw, pop psychologist and host of Dr. Phil, also appeared on Ingraham’s program. During his interview, he argued, “Forty-five thousand 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.”

The main problem with this argument is that car crashes are not contagious. You can’t catch drowning when someone sneezes on you. You can’t compare an illness to a house fire because they are caused by wildly different circumstances and have indescribably different effects on the world around them. They are preventable in different ways, and the way that we can prevent more COVID-19 deaths is to self-isolate.

Additionally, there’s another argument to be made against both McGraw and Pinsky’s statements, which is that COVID-19 deaths do not replace deaths caused by other factors. You can still catch the flu during the pandemic. You can still fall off a ladder and break your back. It’s just that now, there’s another potential cause of death sweeping the nation.

Finally, Dr. Mehmet Oz of Dr. Oz fame appeared on another Fox News program, “Hannity,” suggesting Americans start thinking about returning to school. “Schools are a very appetizing opportunity. I just saw a nice piece in The Lancet arguing the opening of schools may only cost us 2 to 3 percent, in terms of total mortality. Any, you know, any life is a life lost, but… that might be a trade-off some folks would consider.”

There’s so much wrong with this statement, ranging from a factual level to a moral one, but to begin with the basics, Dr. Oz dramatically misinterpreted the Lancet study he mentioned. That study found that closing schools in the United Kingdoms, without any other preventative measures (e.g., quarantining), could be expected to lower COVID-19 deaths by 2 to 4 percent. We can’t extrapolate from that what returning kids to school would do to our current predictions of fatalities. Furthermore, that 2 to 4 percent of deaths, according to Vox’s current models, is equal to approximately an additional 2,400 deaths to the current predicted number of fatalities. That would bring the total number of predicted deaths to 62,400.

Keep in mind that other doctors, including Dr. Birx and Dr. Fauci of the White House coronavirus response team, have predicted somewhere in the range of 100,000 to 200,000 deaths, even if we manage this pandemic perfectly and everyone does what they’re supposed to. Finally, I defy Dr. Oz’s assertion that this would be a trade-off many people would be willing to make. What he is suggesting involves people putting their children at risk of catching a deadly disease, one which could quickly spread through a household, a school and an entire community. How’s that for mojo?

The doctors that you see on TV are generally not working in the public interest. They are there as entertainers. Their job is to generate ad revenue for their station and to keep their show on the air. Their motivation is money, not your health. As a matter of fact, there’s only one television doctor I’ve seen offering viable and practical advice. Who? Jodie Whittaker. The “Thirteenth Doctor” actress put out a video with several good pieces of advice, including “listen to science,” “remember that you’ll get through this” and, my personal favorite, “be kind.” 

I know that these are difficult times. I know that it’s scary and uncertain, and if you’re very, very lucky, you’re incredibly bored. There are doctors — real doctors — and nurses, grocery store clerks and Amazon warehouse employees (workers of every stripe) who have been deemed essential. For them, boredom is the least of their concerns. In times like these, you may wonder why people would lie about something as important as public health just to line their own pockets. To answer that question, I ask that you indulge me with one last quote from “Doctor Who”:

“You know, the very powerful and the very stupid have one thing in common: they don’t alter their views to fit the facts; they alter the facts to fit their views.” (Tom Baker, from The Face of Evil).