A doctor has gone viral after an appearance on Fox News in which he was very forthright and direct about the government's handling of coronavirus - and specifically testing for the deadly disease.
Dr. Rishi Desai, chief medical officer of the Osmosis website, was not having it when Fox News host Martha MacCallum mentioned the "millions of tests" that are supposedly available.
Check out the appearance below:When MacCallum said the government was "working on" improved testing kits for COVID-19, the outspoken medic responded:
"Yeah, they're working on it. They should've been working on it for months. So the fact is we knew about this from the WHO when? December 31, 2019. So last year, we knew about this. We knew [the virus] was coming, we knew it was a respiratory disease, we knew it was person to person."
Desai also mentioned that recently FDA-approved machines can only do one test at a time, which doesn't meet the current demand.
He continued:
"We needed this months ago... South Korea and the U.S. had their first confirmed case on the same date: January 19. Since January 19, you look at what South Korea did and what we did. Their population is one sixth of ours. Look at the cases they have, look at the mortality they have. It's a trifle compared to what we're dealing with right now, because we've had a very weak response and they had a really strong response."
Following Desai's very honest and straightforward response, MacCallum ended the interview saying, "Doctor, thank you, very interesting to talk to you Dr. Desai. I hope you'll come back as we move through this difficult period for the country."
What people on Twitter didn't fail to notice was that Desai wasn't asked any further questions when he started criticizing the government's action - or lack of action - amid the pandemic.
"How to ensure you don't get follow-up questions on Fox, apparently," one person wrote.
"Somebody decided to invite Dr. Rishi Desai onto Fox. I don’t think they’ll be asking him back," another added.
And there were plenty more where they came from: