Fox guest: Reopen schools immediately because “only 171” young people have died from coronavirus
PragerU's Will Witt: “It is imperative that even if you don't social distance they should still go back to school regardless"
Published
Citation From the July 10, 2020, edition of Fox Business’ Cavuto: Coast to Coast
NEIL CAVUTO (HOST): Well, apparently the president's taken his battle way beyond school systems, universities, colleges that are either doing things virtually, or not definitely deciding or whether they're going to do real classes because of the virus. This extends to the way they go about doing things. The president's saying he's asking the Treasury Department right now to reexamine the tax-exempt status and the funding of universities and school systems, saying they're engaged in “Radical Left Indoctrination.”
Lots to talk about there on that, and targeting whether schools reopen in the fall, how far the president can go on that. We've got Prager U's Will Witt with us right now. You know, this is interesting because Will, you've been talking to a lot of medical, you know, officials and the rest, the back-and-forth on reopening anyway, and the safety of what that would involve. What are you hearing, what are you learning?
WILL WITT (HOST, "FLEEING CALIFORNIA"): Yeah, if you go to PragerU.com, I've done about 15 interviews with doctors, front-liners, experts. And all of them are pretty much saying the same thing — that we need to open up. It is imperative that we open up, for our economy, for people to be safe again, to open up.
I mean, I think that this virus is being overblown in some ways, and it's hard to find out what is actually the truth, and what is just political.
CAVUTO: So, will, when they hear again from these pediatric groups, teachers groups, and all worry that there should be carveouts or exceptions for areas where there are spikes in cases, or you know, an unexpected reporting of young people with this — albeit still percentage-wise very, very low — what do they tell you then?
WITT: Well, if you look at the CDC data, I mean, it's right there, I urge anyone to go to the website and look. People who are under the age of 25, as of two days ago, only 171 of them have died from the virus. And that's not very many people at all. And so, young people are basically not dying from this virus, and so opening up the colleges and opening up the schools is a totally fine thing to do. Young people are not dying from this virus.
CAVUTO: So, what kind of precautions are you hearing and recommending? The usual ones, the distancing provisions, and you know, capacity in restaurants, etc.?
WITT: Yeah, I'm hearing that you probably shouldn't go out and protest at a Black Lives Matter event, because that's a surefire way for cases to go up in your state. But when it comes to actually — in the schools, social distancing is obviously good, wearing a mask is obviously good. But again, it's young people are not dying from this virus, and it is imperative that even if you don't social distance they should still go back to school regardless.
CAVUTO: Young people in general, how do they feel about all this? Obviously, a good many of them want to go back to school. But maybe hearing from their parents, hearing from their friends, they hear about these spikes in cases, they hear about this new wave, what's real, what's imagined, what's a threat. How are they handling it all?
WITT: I think young people are very scared because of how misinformed they are. They go on social media all day, and all they hear about is apocalyptic, that the world is ending, the pandemic is killing all these people, there's a spike in cases. And it's like, of course there's a spike in cases, you guys were all out protesting in high numbers with no masks, we were shut down for two months and then we reopened, and then we're also doing a lot more testing.
But people don't really understand that, they thought the virus was just going to go away once we reopened the country. So young people are definitely scared and brainwashed. But they're also worried because, you know, look at a school like Harvard right now, that is still going to try and do online classes, but still charge about the same in tuition. I think it's about $50,000. And I just tell these young people that you can learn more at PragerU from our five-minute videos, than you will at a regular university — and it's completely free.
CAVUTO: I'm going to see, so no $50,000 tab for that, Will. All right, thank you very much, very good catching up with you on all of that. We are keeping track of these cases nevertheless, and this back-and-forth on whether they should open. The president trying to force that issue, he's getting a lot of pushback now, even more than he was getting 24 hours ago. We're on that.