Rush Limbaugh blames coronavirus concern on movies and mocks attempts to contain its spread
Limbaugh: “When you announce that your objective is to contain the spread, you are. I’m sorry, folks, that’s a political decision, and it’s guaranteed to fail, by design”
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From the March 11, 2020, edition of Premiere Radio Network's The Rush Limbaugh Show
RUSH LIMBAUGH (HOST):
RUSH: John Kasich is lost. John Kasich, a former member of the Republican freshman class,1995. He was part of the generation that swept in for the first time the Republicans won in 40 years in the House of Representatives, 1994 elections. He was the budget committee chairman. And this guy used to be as conservative as you and I are. And I don’t know what happened. He still calls himself a Republican. He’s a Never Trumper now. I mean, I know that happened. But I think something happened even before that. He ran for governor of Ohio, got elected.
Anyway, he was on with CNN, which he’s on with CNN frequently. The infobabe, Brianna Keilar said, “Governor Kasich, former Governor, what do states need to do now? Is there any place where you feel like states need to open their eyes, maybe confront something? Or do you think that the states are doing a good job?” This is about the coronavirus. “You think states are doing good job? Now, what do the states need to do?”
(Clip begins)
KASICH: Every governor has to assemble the best people they can get, and you don’t want to have political people in there. I went through this when we had an Ebola threat and the key is you want to really, in a sense, over-prepare. What you don’t want to do is to worry about the criticism, you know, for example, why are they canceling these games, why can’t we get in, what about the impact. You can’t worry about those things.
(Clip ends)
That’s right. You just need to start canceling things. Just need to start canceling things and don’t worry about the criticism. I tell you, if that’s the thinking, we may as well start canceling driving. ‘Cause, folks, do you know how many people die every year because of automobile accidents? You could blame it on the wheel if you wanted to.
If it weren’t for the wheel, these deaths wouldn’t be happening. And it’s a round number, pretty solid number: 50,000 Americans a year die because of automobile accidents. They’re either behind the wheel, they get hit by a car, they’re in a car that’s in an accident. So why not just, if it’s that deadly, why not just ban it? Isn’t it interesting — my point here is, this is political, folks. Everything has become political in our life today. They want you to think this is a health issue. And, of course, part of it is. But it’s been politicized, as I said when this whole thing began.
The coronavirus has been weaponized by the media and by opponents of Donald Trump as the latest weapon they might be able to use to get rid of him or to damage his political standing or what have you. At no time did I ever say that the deep state invented the virus and is using it to kill people so as to blame Trump for it. That’s cockeyed. I don’t even know who would even come up with that. Somebody at BuzzFeed actually said that’s what I said.
Like everybody else, I know where this came from. It came from China. If anybody is responsible for the creation of the virus, it’s the Chinese. It’s the ChiCom government. But it has been weaponized as a way -- my point here is we, as a society, we tolerate automobile deaths. We factor them in, we build them in to what is acceptable to us. Why? Why do we do this?
We obviously have factored in, and it’s been baked in, the number of flu deaths that happen to Americans every year. We know that number is between 16,000 and 30,000 a year, and we factor it in. So right there with just automobile accidents and the flu, we’re looking at hundred thousand deaths a year, eighty to a hundred thousand deaths just with those two things.
I don’t care what the coronavirus is, we’re nowhere near eighty to a hundred thousand deaths even now around the world. The number of deaths around the world is over 4,000. We’re nowhere near what we tolerate with automobile accidents and the flu. Tolerate, accept, or what have you. So why? What is behind this?
Well, look. I know. We’ve had movies about contagions and pathogens and the Andromeda strain and the lurking possibility that one of these things could come along and wipe out everybody and this might be the one that’s going to do that, even though there isn’t any evidence of it.
And I mentioned that I had come across a couple of pieces today that attempt to bring some perspective to the coronavirus. One of the pieces is found at the American Institute for Economic Research. It’s a piece written by Jeffrey Tucker. And the headline is: “Why This Draconian Response to COVID-19?” And this guy is a medical professional, he's a doctor. And one of the things that I’ve observed as I’ve watched Anthony Fauci, National Institute for Health, and as I’ve watched any number of other experts speak, you know what I’ve observed, ladies and gentlemen? Is that medical professionals seem the least panicked of anybody.
The people that seem the most panicked are politicians, followed by media. And it’s a close first and second there. I’ve not seen anybody more panicked than I just saw the governor of Washington, Jay Inslee, who I think is a little bit of a nutcase anyway. And then you’ve got Governor Cuomo in New York, and then you’ve got the media, CNN, NBC, MSNBC. These people are panicking out of their gourds, happily. I mean, it’s a happy panic that the media has.
But medical professionals seem to be the least panicked of anybody. It’s almost as if the media and the left and the Democrats want to inflict damage on our economy. It’s almost like they’re more eager to report that than they are to report that the virus may be contained. If we are to believe the ChiComs — it’s a big if — the cases of coronavirus in China are now on the downhill side of things. They have peaked in China. That would seem to be big news, but it isn’t.
They’re hardly interested in reporting that. Instead, the damage done to the U.S. economy. Now we’ve shut down the University of Wisconsin for the next month. Here in Florida, I’m told that the school systems are telling students to not go to school but to do learning online. There still will be education taking place. Let me ask this.
What happens if all these places shut down, what happens if after a month they realize that the University of Wisconsin, that we don’t have to reopen, we can do every bit of educating that we do here online. We don’t have to have the buildings open. We don’t have to pay for electricity. We don’t have to pay for the heat or to air-condition the place. We don’t need to do this. We don’t need to do that.
As these institutions shut down places, don’t think that there isn’t gonna be some kind of reaction. You can’t shut down a university for a month without somebody having a reaction to how that went, how that goes. We will just have to see. There’s also a gigantic move being made in the Drive-By Media to try to get Trump to cancel his political rallies. Yeah, they’re concerned that Trump’s deplorables might get coronavirus. No, don’t give me that.
You can’t make me believe that the Democrats and the media are concerned about the health of Trump supporters attending a Trump rally. That’s not why they want the rally shut down. They want the rally shut down so that Trump doesn’t do any rallies. So here’s a pull quote from this story by Jeffrey Tucker.
Quote: “What’s interesting, Psychology Today points out, is that your doctor is not panicking.” Exactly what I just observed. “COVID-19 is a new virus in a well-known class of viruses.” Well-known class of viruses. “The coronaviruses are [drumroll sound] cold viruses.”
Why, who said that? Who said the coronavirus is a cold virus? Who said that, Mr. Snerdley? I think it might be Mr. Limbaugh who said that. And it’s Mr. Limbaugh who has been reamed and chastised as usual by a bunch of nobodies, know-nothings for a proper characterization.
Mr. Tucker writes: “I’ve treated countless patients with coronaviruses over the years. In fact, we’ve been able to test for them on our respiratory panels for the entirety of my career. We know how cold viruses work: They cause runny noses, sneezing, cough, and fever, and make us feel tired and achy. For almost all of us, they run their course without medication. And in the vulnerable, they can trigger a more severe illness like asthma or pneumonia. Yes, this virus is different and worse than other coronaviruses, but it still looks very familiar. We know more about it than we don’t know.”
Really? Wait, wait, wait. We know more about this coronavirus than we don’t know? How can that be? “Doctors know what to do with respiratory viruses. As a pediatrician, I take care of patients with hundreds of different viruses that behave similarly to this one. We take care of the kids at home and see them if the fever is prolonged, if they get dehydrated, or if they develop breathing difficulty. Then we treat those problems and support the child until they get better.”
Sounds rather simple. Sounds rather common. Here’s another pull quote. “Are we really ready to imprison the world, wreck financial markets, destroy countless jobs, and massively disrupt life as we know it, all to forestall some uncertain fate, even as medical professionals do know the right way to deal with respiratory illness in general from a medical point of view? It’s at least worth debating.
“Meanwhile, governments are willy-nilly making drastic decisions that profoundly affect the status of human freedom. Their decisions are going to affect our lives in profound ways. And there has thus far been no real debate on this. It’s just been presumed that containment of the spread rather than the care of the sick is the only way forward.”
You know, it’s such a great point. Rather than treat the sick, we’re all obsessed with containing the spread. Well, good luck with that. Has anybody ever contained the spread of the common cold? Has anybody ever contained the spread of the flu? No. It’s a guaranteed failure, and when the failure is announced, guess what? It’s more panic. “We have lost the ability to contain the spread of COVID-19!” Well, you can’t contain the spread of anything else, either.
These diseases run their course. But when you announce that your objective is to contain the spread, you are. I’m sorry, folks, that’s a political decision, and it’s guaranteed to fail, by design. Have we contained the spread of cancer? Have we contained the spread? Take your pick of any disease you want. Have we contained the spread? Have we stopped people from getting it? No.
That would truly be a miracle, if we had actually contained the spread.
The way they’re talking about it, we do contain the spread by limiting the number of people. But normally it’s the viruses that do that. The viruses need healthy hosts, and once they run out of healthy hosts, they themselves fade away, the viruses. It’s what happens to Ebola. We don’t defeat Ebola. Ebola runs out of health hosts. I know many of you think that Obama cured Ebola, but I hate to tell you that wasn’t the case.