Ellen Pompeo is taking aim at TV doctors like Dr. Mehmet Oz, Dr. Phil McGraw and Dr. Drew Pinsky, who she claims have said “stupid selfish s—t” amid the coronavirus outbreak.
After advising fans on Twitter on Saturday, April 18, that staying home will stop the spread of COVID-19 to “to nurses doctors and anyone who works in a hospital housekeeping …security .. maintenance,” the Grey’s Anatomy star, 50, slammed “the old white guy tv docs,” telling them to “walk that s–t riht back .to your lazy boys and sit your stupid asses down in your living rooms on your golf courses where you live..tired out of touch old fools don’t get me started today.”
“So let’s think about all of our first responders and healthcare workers home health aids nursing home staff…always … it’s a much better place to put our focus,” added Pompeo, who plays Dr. Meredith Grey on the ABC hit, before taking another shot.
“Also to those out of touch tv docs which I’m sure they would call me lol…you took an oath so so many years ago to do no harm… making careless statements in this environment when so many healthcare workers are suffering physically and emotionally….is defying that oath,” she added before retweeting photos of the trio of TV docs and writing that “they have been so busy in their dressing rooms getting their faces powdered and worrying about their ratings …they have no idea what doctors and healthcare professionals on the front lines actually do or they just don’t care.”
Dr. Oz faced backlash earlier this week after he made comments on Fox News about reopening schools amid the pandemic, saying that it “may only cost us 2 to 3 percent in terms of total mortality” of students, teachers and school staff.
“I’ve realized my comments on risks around opening schools have confused and upset people, which was never my intention,” the cardiologist and Dr. Oz Show host, 59, said in a video message posted on his Twitter page on Thursday, April 16. “I misspoke.”
Dr. Phil, 60, was interviewed about the effects of the COVID-19 shutdown on the Ingraham Angle on Thursday and compared the more than 38,000 people who have passed away from the virus in the U.S. to deaths from car accidents, smoking or swimming pool accidents.
“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’re doing it for this? And the fallout is going to last for years because people’s lives are being destroyed,” the TV host, who has a doctorate in clinical psychology, said while citing vastly incorrect numbers.
He apologized for his comments in a Facebook Live the following day. “What I believe, regardless of what I may have come across as saying, is we need widespread testing and continued protection of the high-risk portion of the population,” he said on Friday, April 17. “Last night I said we as a society have chosen to live with certain controllable deadly risk every day, smoking, auto crashes, swimming and, yes, I know that those are not contagious, so probably bad examples.”
Dr. Drew, 61, apologized earlier this month for comparing coronavirus to the flu in February, claiming in a video that a person’s chance of dying from coronavirus is lower than “being hit by an asteroid.”
“My early comments about equating coronavirus with influenza were wrong. They were incorrect. I was part of a chorus that was saying that. And we were wrong. And I want to apologize for that,” the addiction medicine specialist said in a Periscope video shared to his Twitter on April 4. “I wish I had gotten it right, but I got it wrong.”
As of April 18, there were more than 2.3 million cases of coronavirus worldwide, with over 737,000 people testing positive in the U.S. More than 160,000 people have died across the globe.
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