Navarro: Coronavirus Lockdown ‘Indirectly’ Killing Americans

White House trade advisor Peter Navarro on Monday sounded off on the stay-at-home orders many states are still under as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.

While many are pushing to begin slowly reopening the economy and getting Americans back to work, there are still some pushing back against doing so too early.

Navarro told Fox News Channel’s “America’s Newsroom” that the lockdown has been dangerous because it is “indirectly” killing Americans through suicide, depression, alcoholism and drug addiction as many people are losing their jobs.

“The original death estimate was about 2 million Americans dying in the absence of any kind of mitigation or containment, and the president took the very tough choice of entering into a mitigation phase and a containment phase,” Navarro outlined. “It was a manufactured recession that we face. And the estimates would basically take that down to 100,000 to 200,000 deaths. And that is a number that’s still out there. We know what the numbers are today. We’re — we’re just moving through time. We’re trying to simultaneously protect the American people from the effects of the China virus, killing them directly, but it’s also true that the lockdown indirectly kills Americans through the economic effects with a higher suicide rates, depression, alcoholism, drug addiction and all that.”

“So what the president has been trying to do is thread that needle,” he continued. “And it really it’s, Ed, it’s the most difficult decision that a president’s ever had to make. And, Sandra … this is where we are in the situation.”

Follow Trent Baker on Twitter @MagnifiTrent