The psychological damage caused by arbitrary lockdown orders may be worse for Americans than the virus itself, says daytime talk show host Dr. Phil.

Speaking with Fox News’ Laura Ingraham Thursday, Dr. Phil, AKA Phil McGraw, explained the crushing psychological trauma, including depression and anxiety, heaved on vulnerable Americans from the isolation experienced as a result of lockdown measures.

“The fact of the matter is: the longer this lockdown goes on the more vulnerable people get,” the TV doctor said.

“There’s a point at which people start having enough problems in lockdown that it will actually create more destruction and actually more death across time than the actual virus will itself.”

McGraw said the numbers don’t reflect the need for a lockdown, and highlighted various death statistics over which America never closes.

“250 a year die from poverty and the poverty line is getting such that people are going to fall below that because the economy is crashing around us,” said McGraw, who holds a Ph.D. in clinical psychology.

“And they’re doing that because people are dying from the coronavirus,” he told Ingraham. “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.”

On the swimming pool statistic, Dr. Phil was widely criticized for misstating the number of deaths, exaggerating it by a factor of 100.

“This will end soon,” Dr. Phil told people attempting to cope with being quarantined in homes with multiple people. “We probably shouldn’t have ever started this [quarantine], but just realize there’s a light at the end of the tunnel. We need to get out of this and get back to work.”

While President Trump has expressed a desire to reopen America by May 1, medical advisors including NIAID Director Dr. Anthony Fauci have cautioned against reopening too soon and warn of a “new normal” in society following the pandemic where the public will continue practicing social distancing guidelines for the foreseeable future.

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Reopen America protests have hit Texas as citizens from all over the state spent the afternoon protesting required face masks, economic shutdown and unconstitutional state mandates. The police were also in attendance, issuing a warning to a protester for honking her horn too loudly.

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