CDC director seeing more suicides, drug overdoses than COVID deaths among high schoolers
Phil Kerpen, president of the Committee to Unleash Prosperity, joins Laura Ingraham to discuss the dangers of keeping America's schools closed.
This story refers to suicide. If you or someone you know is having thoughts of suicide, please contact the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255).
Suicides have spiked amid the coronavirus pandemic, specifically among high school students. A guest on Thursday night's edition of "The Ingraham Angle" said Robert Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), should be sounding a louder alarm about the problem.
"It's pretty incredible because a lot of us predicted this might happen. And unfortunately, it appears that it has happened," the guest, Phil Kerpen, president of the Committee to Unleash Prosperity, said.
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"Self-harm is the No. 2 cause of death among teenagers after accidents. Kills thousands a year. When you're comparing it to a virus that kills tens a year in that age bracket, even a tiny increase in the percentage is going to be a much bigger number. And we thought that might happen and that has happened.
"The insane thing to me," Kerpen continued, "is this is a big deal and the CDC is not touting it from the platform. They're not going to the White House podium. They're not going on a show like yours and saying it."
Redfield addressed to suicide issue July 14 during a Buck Institute webinar.
"We're seeing, sadly, far greater suicides now than we are deaths from COVID," Redfield said at the time. "We're seeing far greater deaths from drug overdose that are above excess that we had as background than we are seeing the deaths from COVID."
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Separately, host Laura Ingraham brought up a German study that said "exposure to children may make adults less likely to contract COVID-19," noting the study wasn't peer-reviewed.
Kerpen responded: "Wouldn't that be an unbelievable irony after all of these strikes and these demands and all of this stuff from these teachers? If it turns out that being around children is actually protective, that the child had colds and other illnesses, they have challenges to the immune system of adults that protect them from future COVID infection?"
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