My Foreboding Thought: This Situation Isn’t Sustainable
Mar 31, 2020
RUSH: Well, I guess the big news now is Fredo Cuomo of CNN has tested positive for coronavirus and will be quarantining in his basement. His brother, the governor of New York, Andrew Cuomo, has just revealed details of all of this, continuing to speak about it. It was almost a life review here of Chris Cuomo, how he became a lawyer, then a journalist, and how the dad was a very domineering personality and told Fredo that he better become a lawyer. It’s kind of… I don’t want to characterize it. But it was strange for somebody still alive.
Greetings, and welcome, Rush Limbaugh, the EIB Network at 800-282-2882. The email address, ElRushbo@eibnet.us if you want to communicate that way.
And once again great to be back with you. I have an overriding sense of foreboding here, folks. I’m really in a dilemma as to how much of what I really think do I share with you. Some of it I can’t. I’d be run out of this studio if I were to tell you some of what I think. And I’m talking about in terms of what needs to be done, not the circumstance that we’re in, but the solution, because the overriding sense of foreboding I have is that this cannot go on.
This just can’t go on. We cannot go on like this for months. We are going to destroy the country or the economy, however you want to look at it. The favorite word of Millennials is “sustainable.†Well, this isn’t sustainable. And we, as a society, down the road are going to be faced with some really, really serious questions that we cannot avoid. The longer we go, the more unavoidable answering some of these questions is. I don’t mean to be speaking cryptically. I’m doing something that’s somewhat uncharacteristic for me. I’m speaking safely here. I may dance around this, but this just can’t go on like this.
You know, somebody called me yesterday, “Rush, what do you think the recovery will look like?†And I kind of blew the answer. I was getting my feet wet yesterday. I’ve been gone. I’ve been gone for — how many shows did I miss in a row? I was in such a fog, I don’t even know. Was it five or six? It was 10 shows. My absence was not a vacation. I was not staying informed as I was away because I was not capable of it. So getting back yesterday was to get the voice back up to shape, in shape and in gear and getting my brain back up to speed and engaged. And so I kind of blew the answer.
I said it’s gonna roar back. Wait a minute. That’s not true because it’s gonna take what to roar back? It’s gonna take money. It’s gonna require people having money to roar back. And the longer this goes, the less people, the fewer people are going to have any money to ignite the economy. Now, there will be stimulus impact, no doubt about that. There will be a recovery, don’t misunderstand. But the guy wanted to know, is it gonna be massive all at once, and I said, no, it won’t be that. It will be phased simply because even if that magical day comes where somebody says — who is it gonna be? Who is going to say, “Okay, folks, go back to work� Well, the president might or might it be Dr. Fauci. But whoever says it are people gonna go, “All right!†And leave. Or are they still gonna be a little trepidatious?
Because all of this, all of this is based on one thing that we don’t have. We don’t have a vaccine for this. We don’t have a vaccine, and until we get a vaccine — like I was just listening to Governor Cuomo here, he was giving his daily briefing to the people of New York. And he said that when we finally get a test, when we get a widespread, quick test to determine who’s got coronavirus and who doesn’t, that will determine when people go back to work. Well, that would be great, but I don’t know if that’s true.
Okay. So you test negative, but there’s no vaccine out there. What happens if everybody heads back out? And folks, a vaccine is not on the horizon for at least a year. They’re doing clinical trials on drugs. You know, the chloroqiune and zithromiocin is the most promising thing. If there is developed a medicine that can deal with this, then that would change things dramatically and hold the line until there is a vaccine, but a vaccine, that’s what separates the coronavirus from the flu. We’ve got vaccines for it, we know the mutations. We’re not up to speed on the coronavirus in that way.
So you have the medical reality and then you have the economic reality. This can’t go on. I mean, how many people want to see the United States economy destroyed? I doubt very many. But then what is gonna be required to prevent that from happening? People going back to work. It’s gonna be things reopening without a vaccine. What’s that expose people to? It’s a serious, serious question.
All I know is that what’s happening now cannot go on. This business of shutting down until the end of June or the end of July and putting people in jail if they leave their homes, which, what governor, Maryland said that? That’s not sustainable. That’s not — (interruption) Mr. Snerdley here with a little prof note saying the ChiComs are back to work. Don’t believe a damn thing coming out of there. They’ve already reopened the wet markets. They’re selling bats. They’re selling live bats for food at the Wuhan wet market. (interruption) I am not. They say that their number of cases is declining, the Chinese economy is getting back.
The Chinese government is so different, we don’t know what they did to make this possible. How many people did they drag out of their homes in Wuhan and just murder and then bury in concrete plots to get rid of this virus? They don’t have a vaccine, either. The ChiComs don’t have a vaccine. If they do, they’re not sharing it with anybody.
We’re not gonna do that. We’re not gonna drag people out of hospitals or out of their homes and take them and put them in what are called reeducation camps or whatever the Chinese do. Look, this is a communist government. They have an entirely different view of the value of life, the quality of life and all that. And if they detect any single person being a culprit here, that person is in deep, deep trouble if the state finds out about them.
You can’t trust anything coming out of China. It would be great if it were true. It would be great if you could look at the Chinese model and say, “Okay. They’re back work, their number of cases is falling, their economy is getting back up to running, and it took three months. So using that as a guideline…†But we don’t see the same pattern happening here. However, there is this story. This is, interestingly enough, this is from CNN, but what is the actual source? The headline: “Coronavirus Death Rate Is Lower Than Previously Reported, Study Says, But It’s Still Deadlier Than Seasonal Flu.â€
Now, this is a study from good old Imperial College, again, in London, which gave us this original model that 2.2 million Americans could die if we did nothing; 500,000 in the U.K. could die if we did nothing. Of course, we’re not doing nothing. We’re mitigating all over the place — social distancing, quarantining, sheltering in place, and all of this stuff.
But this study from the Imperial College in London — and it was published in a highly respected medical journal called Lancet — says that fewer people die from coronavirus than previously thought. In fact, this report from Imperial College in London says that 0.66% of infected people die. Now, that’s more than from the regular flu.
The regular flu mortality rate is 0.1%, but this is far lower than the 4% that we were told for months, and it’s lower than the 1%. Remember when Dr. Fauci… This is the kind of stuff, I must say, it irritates me. Dr. Fauci came out and reported that the mortality rate for coronavirus is much lower than we thought. This is two or three weeks ago.
But, he said, it’s still 10 times deadlier than the flu. Well, guess what the headline was? The story was the coronavirus is much less deadly than we were originally told. Then Dr. Fauci said, “But it’s still 10 times deadlier than the flu.†The reason for that is the flu mortality rate is 0.1%. The coronavirus rate at the time was thought to be 1% or 10 times 0.1% of the flu.
Now Lancet is saying that 0.66% of infected people die.
So the number of deaths from coronavirus continues to be reported as declining. “The study says the lower number is due to taking account of the number of people who have milder cases of the coronavirus.†In fact, Governor Cuomo today made a big deal about the big number of discharges from New York hospitals, people that no longer need treatment.
That’s one aspect of this that’s really not been reported since day one, since that whole John Hopkins website was first developed and first published. The number of recoveries has never been a singular item reported here, and then there is the undeniable fact that there are forces in the American culture who want you to continue to think the worst of this, and they want you to blame President Trump for it.
They want you to think it isn’t getting better, that it won’t get better because of Donald Trump — and now the My Pillow guy. (Man, what a teachable moment yesterday that was as well. We’ll get to all of this as the program unfolds before your very eyes and ears today.) So the researchers estimate that the overall death rate coronavirus to be about two-thirds of 1%.
But that number goes up in older adults: “7.8% of those 80 and older are estimated to die after getting the infection, but the deaths were estimated to be exceedingly rare in children younger than 9.†The fatality rate there is infinitesimal. So go figure. All I know is this is not sustainable.
Now they’re talking about giving everybody masks.
The surgeons are saying, “Ah, I don’t think we need to give everybody masks. You put masks on everybody and you’re just gonna create a psychological downturn.†This is not sustainable. I also want to share with you something Governor Cuomo said. He gave pretty rousing, attempting-to-be-motivating address here to the people of New York.
He put up a slide that said, “We know what we have to do; we just have to do it,†and here are the four things that we have to do, according to Governor Cuomo. We have to have “individual discipline.†We need “government skill and performance.†We need “social stamina,†and we need “national unity.†For what? To sustain this? The discipline to watch the economy peter out?
The discipline to watch government skill and performance try to manage the decline, once again, of the U.S. economy? Social stamina? Well, I know what that means. Social distancing and staying inside and having the discipline to do so — and national unity. Well, that’d be great, but we got people that are working on trying to prevent national unity where this is concerned.
So I don’t… That’s the overriding foreboding thought that I have — and, you know, who knows, folks. Listen to the whole program. It depends on where my mouth goes the remainder of the program. I might divulge even more of what I’m thinking here.
https://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2020/03/31/my-foreboding-thought-this-situation-isnt-sustainable/
