Everyone who is (or wants to be) anyone seems to have some opinion or advice about the current COVID-19 crisis. Many of those opinions have been, frankly, quite bad. And someone who makes his money from media appearances trying to disappear those opinions from the Internet after realizing those opinions were, in fact, quite bad, doesn't help matters any.
Dr. Drew Pinsky is up there with Dr. Oz and Dr. Phil on the list of "celebrity doctors whose name you probably know." He soared to fame in the 1990s and 2000s on the back of his TV and radio advice show Loveline. Pinsky, who performs and markets himself as Dr. Drew, is indeed a medical doctor—but he is not an epidemiologist or specialist in infectious disease. He earned his MD from the University of Southern California in 1984 and went to work as a physician, specializing in the treatment of addiction and chemical dependencies, in the decades that followed.
But not being an expert in infectious disease did not stop him from being widely dismissive of the potential threat from COVID-19 throughout the year, even as the threat continued to grow. Dr. Drew is taking the threat seriously now that more than 330,000 people inside the United States have tested positive for the disease and more than 10,000 have died. On Saturday, he released a video apologizing for his earlier comments, which he said were "wrong."
The statements Pinsky made before that April 4 apology, however, were damning—particularly in retrospect. Someone using the name DroopsDr made a five-minute-long supercut compilation highlighting dozens of instances when Pinsky incorrectly dismissed the threat.
For example, in a clip dated February 4, Pinsky said COVID-19 is "way less virulent than the flu," the next day adding the disease is "mild, doesn't hurt anybody," and saying, "that should be the headline: way less serious than influenza!" At the time, it is true, the flu was indeed more common in the United States than COVID-19. But he continued to express that sentiment throughout the month of March as reported, confirmed cases—and, unfortunately, deaths—continued to climb.
By March 28, Pinsky was admitting, "It's not like there aren't going to be hundreds and hundreds of thousands of cases. There will be hundreds and hundreds of thousands of cases." But, he added, individuals should not let the numbers scare them because, "there's 24 million, 30 million flu cases every year" from which he said 18,000 people die. (This was also incorrect: about 35.5 million individuals contracted the flu during the 2018-2019 season, and more than 34,000 people died from it, according to the CDC.)
Writing wrongs
Reporter Yashar Ali Tweeted out a link to the video on April 4, calling Dr. Drew "a disgrace." Apparently Pinsky and/or his staff did not care for the extra attention to the supercut, however, and a few hours later, an attempt to view the video came up with the message: "This video is no longer available due to a copyright claim by Drew Pinsky Inc."
Ali also noted in a later Tweet that Pinsky was apparently threatening people who shared the tweet, saying in response to many, "Infringing copywrite [sic] laws is a crime. Hang on to your retweets. Or erase to be safe."
DroopsDr alluded to the takedown in an April 5 tweet, saying:
I really took Dr. Drew at his word yesterday [April 4] and appreciated him taking responsibility... I will say that the sincerity of that apology continues to be cheapened by each attempt to suppress or litigate what Preet Bharara, Ted Boutrous and others have viewed and determined is a clear example of the fair use doctrine. True apologies, for what it's worth, do not have conditions.
Bharara, a former US attorney, and Boutrous, a high-profile attorney, were among the many who replied to defend or amplify Ali.
"You are safe from any 'copywrite' lawsuit, @yashar," Bharara tweeted. "Know your writes."
"Truth and fair use got you," Boutrous added in a tweet that quoted Pinsky's now-deleted threat.
It appears that either Pinsky or YouTube was inclined to agree. Sometime around noon Monday, give or take an hour, the YouTube video listing very quietly started working once again. Similarly, every message on Pinsky's @drdrew Twitter account relating to the video has been deleted.
Ars has reached out to Pinsky for a comment and will update this story if we hear back.
Listing image by Jason Mendez | Getty Images
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