Rush Limbaugh suggests hospitalization rates are being exaggerated: “You have been led to believe that every hospital is overflowing”

Limbaugh: “So much of this has been politicized, folks, that it’s just impossible anymore to actually find factual truth.”

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Citation

From the March 31, 2020, edition of Premiere Radio Network's The Rush Limbaugh Show

RUSH LIMBAUGH (HOST): One of the things that interests me is the hospitalization numbers. Because if you look at Drudge, if you look at the drive-by media, you would believe there is not a single hospital bed in this country, right? You have been led to believe that every hospital is overflowing. That dead bodies are in body bags and refrigerated trucks that are being parked off to landfills or whatever. I mean, some of the most incredible reporting I have seen, and it is in New York, it is in Washington D.C., Maryland, the Eastern Seaboard states. There's just not a hospital bed around, the hospitals are overflowing. If you have to go to a hospital you may as just well pack it in and die. So I wanted to find out what the hospitalization rates were here in Palm Beach County.

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Here's the case data for Palm Beach county. Total cases in Palm Beach county of coronavirus 514. Of the 514 cases, 488 are residents of Palm Beach County. 24 are non-residents.

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Total cases in Palm Beach county 514, total deaths 11. Hospitalizations, the number of people who are hospitalized with coronavirus, 57. Does that strike you as a large number? I want you to think of the way this is being reported, particularly about New York and other places where there’s not a hospital bed to be had, where they’re putting people in the hallways. There’s no ventilators. There’s no nothing. We haven’t got-- we’re just in bad shape out there. 514 cases, 57 hospitalizations. That sounds like a small number to me. Why aren’t the hospitalization numbers being reported to us? I mean, if you go to New York, a field hospital is being built in Central Park! We’ve got the Mercy ship that floated in there. They’re clearly trying to create the impression that we don’t have any hospitals. We’re so overflowing with cases, that we don’t have any hospitals. Now, it may be true in New York. But, again, 57 hospitalizations in Florida. In other words, if you are in Palm Beach County and you happen to come down with this, there’s gonna be room in hospitals. I’m not urging people to go there. Don’t misunderstand.

I just -- so much of what happens during crises like this. So much of this has been politicized, folks, that it’s just impossible anymore to actually find factual truth.