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‘I Would Like Them To Shut Up’: Dr. Drew Says Media Needs To Stop ‘Whipping Up Further Panic And Chaos’ With Coronavirus Coverage

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Katie Jerkovich Entertainment Reporter
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Dr. Drew Pinsky said the media needs to just “shut up” and stop “whipping up further panic and chaos” with its coronavirus coverage.

“I hate it, I hate it, I would like them [media] to shut up,” Pinsky shared Friday during his appearance on “The Pat McAfee Show” when asked about the media’s coverage during the pandemic.  (RELATED: Pearl Jam Postpones North American Tour Over Growing Coronavirus Concerns)

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“I’m remembering now back in the very beginning what got me sort of mobilized. I was sitting in a local Fox affiliate in New York City, and there was a reporter in Italy going, ‘we have a staggering number of cases…we have seven thousand cases.’ And I thought, oh my god, you need to shut up, because this is going to go way higher.”(RELATED: REPORT: Coachella Potentially Rescheduled To October Due To Coronavirus Fears)

Pinsky explained that the reasoning behind his thinking was because the cases were probably going to go up “and what are we going to call a million?” (RELATED: Here Are The Members Of Congress Self-Quarantining After Meeting Person With Coronavirus At CPAC)

“Look we have 24 million flu cases in this country, every year, thirty thousand deaths. What do you call those numbers?” the doctor explained. “And this is going to be comparable, or worse, or who knows.”

“So, shut up, because you are only going to panic people,” he added. “And they ensued, and are continuing to spin this thing in ways I think are disturbing.”

Dr. Drew said instead we should really be patting “ourselves on the back for the colossal effort and the sacrifices and the fact that we are affecting the curve. We are slowing it down the way we intended.”

“We should be congratulating ourselves, not whipping up further panic and chaos,” he added. “That’s the part I have been upset about.”

Later in the interview, he backed up Dr. Anthony Fauci for being cautious with recommending new drugs during the pandemic because he believes he has to “see the data” first.

“For instance, there is a lot of enthusiasm from clinicians about hydroxychloroquine … and Fauci rather than taking any opinion whatsoever just said ‘when I see the data I’ll tell you.'”

“And we should have some data, I’m hoping next week, when they open up some of these studies and let us know,” he added. “‘Is the hydroxychloroquine changing the course of this thing they way we think it might.'”