Popular Twitch streamer Dr DisRespect has found himself at the center of yet another controversy. In a recent Twitch stream, which appears to have been deleted, Dr DisRespect made some controversial statements about the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.
Dr DisRespect began his comments about the coronavirus by first acknowledging the Elon Musk situation, wherein the billionaire started calling for America to open back up despite the ongoing threat of the virus. Musk's comments on Twitter earned him a great deal of criticism which seemingly led to a Twitter meltdown where the billionaire said he was going to sell all of his posessions and declared that the stock price for Tesla was too high, causing the stock price to drop.
Dr DisRespect indicated that he agreed with Musk that the world should open back up despite the coronavirus threat. "I don't need Elon to convince me," he said in the stream. Dr DisRespect then read an opinion piece written by Dr. Scott Atlas and published by The Hill that calls for an end to the "panic" and to "open most workplaces and small businesses." As pointed out by Kotaku, Dr. Atlas is not a doctor of virology or epidemiology, and his article has been criticized by scientists and members of the medical community for relying on data from a flawed study on the coronavirus conducted by Stanford University.
Following this, Dr DisRespect then showed a graph claiming that hospitals were not being overcrowded by coronavirus patients. He also shared a video by Dr. Thomas Cowan, who pushes the conspiracy theory that 5G causes the coronavirus. This prompted a response from his Twitch chat, with one viewer donating $3 so that Dr DisRespect would have to read their comment about the fact that over 60,000 people in the United States have already died from the virus. Conversely, someone else donated $15 to express their support for Dr DisRespect and his views on the coronavirus.
"Let's not just be robots and say, 'Yes sir, we will do everything you tell us to do, government, sir.' Let's listen to the experts and I don't know. Again, I gotta bite my tongue," Dr DisRespect said during the stream. Dr DisRespect also mentioned how he wants people to be able to go back to work because he keeps getting donations from Twitch viewers who are currently unemployed due to the coronavirus pandemic.
This is far from the first time Dr DisRespect has been at the center of a controversy, though it will be interesting to see if he continues to talk about controversial subjects like the coronavirus pandemic moving forward considering the polarizing impact it appeared to have on his fans.
Source: Kotaku