California Doctor on Immigration and the COVID-19 Pandemic
Dec 23, 2020
RUSH: Here’s Randy in San Luis Obispo, California. Great to have with us. Hello.
CALLER: Good morning, Rush. Blessings and prayers to you. You’re the first person that’s been willing to have the wherewithal to go against the political correctness. You know, I’m a physician about 200 miles north of Los Angeles. I was born and raised in LA. I trained in LA hospitals, the county hospitals down there. And I’ve been dismayed to see that no one seems to be connecting the dots with regard to immigration, illegal immigration and the COVID pandemic.
I follow the sites, the Los Angeles County sites as far as hospitalizations and have been doing it ever since March, and, you know, 72% of the hospitalizations in Los Angeles are Hispanics. Seventy-one percent of the ICU hospitalizations are Hispanics. And that’s from March 1st to December 19th.
RUSH: You know, Randy… Randy, I need to interrupt you. I took your call prematurely. I’m out of time, but I really want to talk to you. Can you hold on through the break? It’s gonna be about 10 minutes — or if you’d rather not hold on, give Mr. Snerdley your number; we’ll call you back ’cause I do want to hear about this.
CALLER: Yeah. No, I think it’s really important.
RUSH: I will see you. Work it out with Mr. Snerdley how we’re gonna stay in touch with you.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: We have Randy here from San Luis Obispo who held on through the break. He is a doctor in California for much of his life and has studied the connection between the high incidence of COVID and the illegal immigration traffic coming over the border, and Biden talking about this opening up even more. I want to go back to him now. Welcome, Randy. I’m gladly you held on. Continue to make your point here.
CALLER: Yeah. Thanks, Rush. I want to make it real clear right at the start here: My wife is Hispanic. I have no problem, nothing against Hispanic people. So I just want to make that real clear. But they are the large, large majority of people that are being hospitalized in Los Angeles, which means they’re basically a reservoir if not the main reservoir for passing the COVID virus around.
And that’s because they can’t work distantly. They can’t work remotely. The vast majority are boots-on-the-ground agriculture — you know, domestics, chefs in restaurants and cafeterias — and they also tend to live in very dense homes where you can pass viruses around very quickly and easily. And if somebody in one of those households is illegal, it’s probably unlikely that any of them are likely to go in to seek care until they’re very, very sick.
The interesting thing was back in I think it was March or April I started thinking about this, and I looked into it. The Pew Research showed the large majority of illegal immigration was along the entire southern border of the United States. California, Texas, and Florida were the highest numbers, but it was pretty much all the southern states.
As you’ve watched over the course of time, that has kind of, you know, gone up gone up to all the states, throughout the United States. And that’s obviously because of migration and then, of course, the passage of the virus. So, you know, I kept waiting for somebody to make this point, and I’ve never heard anybody make this point, and to me it seems very obvious.
And it’s particularly scary when I saw last night on the news them showing these caravans ramping up down in Central America kind of waiting for Biden to take office and thinking that they can start coming across the border again. I mean, if we are already overwhelmed — which we are — I mean, that’s gonna be the final deluge.
You know, these people coming across are… A lot of them have the virus or will be in situations where they’ll pass the virus around. So I just… I’m glad I had a chance to bring this forward to you because it’s extremely worrisome to me if the borders start opening up for them.
RUSH: Well, let me… While I have you here, I have the stories that you’re talking about involving Biden, and I’ve got one from the New York Post and one from TheHill.com. The first one: “Biden Says Fast Immigration Changes Could Cause a Rush at the Border.†Now, this was during his press briefing yesterday, and he said that “restoring the U.S. immigration system would be an overwhelming priority.†Folks — and I know, Randy, you’ll agree with me. By “restoring our immigration system,†he means he will no longer enforce immigration law. That’s what he means.
CALLER: I’m afraid so.
RUSH: He means he’s going to go back to the Democrat Party interpretation of immigration, and that is there’s no limits on it. But Biden also said — and I’m paraphrasing here — that he’s not gonna be able to do away with the southern border on his first day in office (he was sending a signal to leftists), because doing that might cause “a rush of two million people coming across the border.â€
But he said that he’ll get it done within the next six months, and he says it’s gonna cost a lot of money to not enforce the immigration law. Now, all of these illegal aliens, will they be tested for COVID before they’re allowed to enter the United States or are they just gonna be given priority to get a vaccine? What do you think?
CALLER: Well, of course, that’s a very big and important question. You know, they’ve been prioritizing it to first front-line caregivers. In fact, I’m scheduled to get my vaccine next week. And then kind of down the line, and they talk about essential workers. I hope essential workers means the people that I’m talking about. But I really think if you were gonna aim at one particular source, you want to get the source that is passing this around most frequently.
And that, of course, is the illegal immigrants and the people who have to work in person, and they can’t do it from home. So I would hope that they would start immunizing those people. Because it’s actually very much akin to, you know, back in the early 1900s when they tried to get control of yellow fever. You know, what they found when they finally realized it was a mosquito that was passing this…
They started putting anti-mosquito agents into all the ponds and lakes and the places where they breed, and that is how they finally got control over yellow fever. And this is kind of a similar thing. And I don’t mean to be in any way degrading people and saying they’re like mosquitoes. But just like the mosquitos that were the reservoir for the disease, in this same situation the people that are the reservoir for the disease are the groups that should be, I think, approached most aggressively and, you know, in the very forefront of this.
RUSH: Well, one thing is — and I could be wrong about this. My perception is that in all discussions of COVID and reading where it’s the United States is the epicenter now. More people are dying from it here than anywhere else per capita, more people are contracting it here than anywhere else in the world per capita. But in all of this, we never hear about why and how.
And other than the people who are attempting to shut down the economy by saying that it is spreading in these ways that really can’t be established or proven. And it’s being used as an excuse to shut down economies and shut down various businesses, so forth. It’s being used to exert control over the American people by primarily Democrat governors and Democrat mayors.
But the one thing I was gonna say that doesn’t come up, which is why I was fascinated talking to you, is the role illegal immigration plays in the spread of this. I know you’re not comparing people to mosquitoes. Don’t misunderstand here. But still, if you have a known source that is a problem, doesn’t it make sense to do something about it?
CALLER: Well, that’s exactly my point, and that’s exactly my concern. And, you know, I still have a lot of friends down in Los Angeles and, you know, am in contact with them. I mean, they’re just… You know, who are in the medical profession, and, I mean, they’re just overwhelmed. And, you know, I can’t imagine… As bad as it is, I can’t imagine it getting worse. And, quite frankly, you know, I think… I think we’re approaching — and this just my opinion. I think we’re approaching the apex of this.
And I think, you know, if you keep doing what we’re doing from the standpoint of getting vaccines out there, you know, you’ll get to herd immunity more rapidly. And herd immunity is not a strategy; it’s just a reality. You know, the way that epidemics and pandemics end is with herd immunity, and so the faster that we can get herd immunity, the more we can get control of this thing.
RUSH: I remember I happened to be somebody who brought that up back in March or April. I was ridiculed profoundly for it, as were a lot of other people who suggested it, because it requires people to be infected. It requires the spread of the disease, but among people who are gonna survive it. And already… Correct me if I’m wrong. Do we still not have…? Is it still not true that the survivability rate is 99%?
CALLER: Yeah, you’re right. In fact, because I’m in the just-over-70 age-group, you know, I was just reading on it just yesterday; it’s still 94.5% was the survival rate, I think it was. In the statistic I saw, I think it was 65 and up. So, I mean, you know, it’s still very high survival rate even in the older age-group. And, yes, for everybody all over, it’s 99 and a fraction.
I don’t know what the exact number is, percent. So I mean it’s still very survivable. But the fact is that, you know, you can at least kind of get some kind of control so you “flatten the curve,†as they talk about so you don’t have the hospitals the overwhelmed by getting more rapidly to herd immunity, and I think the way that you do it now is that we do, in fact, have a vaccine.
But the thing is, you gotta get those people vaccinated and you gotta get them out there. And if they’re kind of hiding away because they’re illegal and they don’t want to identified as illegal and suffer the repercussions, then they won’t come forward. You won’t get control of the reservoir, and it will drag on longer.
RUSH: Doctor, thank you for the call. That’s Randy in San Luis Obispo, California. I appreciate the perspective. Meanwhile, on the same subject, Susan Rice, who has been chosen by Biden as his domestic policy chief, told a Spanish-language news service on Monday — and again I’m paraphrasing here — that the border will not be able to be erased overnight due, in large part, to “the damage done over the last four years.â€
But Rice said the Biden team are committed to erasing it as soon as possible. “Members of … Joe Biden’s White House transition effort cautioned Tuesday that he would not undo all of President Trump’s changes to the U.S. immigration system overnight, and explained that incoming administration officials would ‘need time’ to pursue such efforts.†They really want to roll back everything Trump did.
Trump tightened down illegal immigration.
They’re admitting that they to want reopen it back up, but they’re cautioning everybody that it’s gonna take time because of the possibility of COVID spreading, but they still gonna do it. “Susan Rice, the president-elect’s domestic policy chief [said], ‘We will be able to take some steps to change policies right away. Others will take time to put in place, and the situation at the border will not transform overnight due in large part to the damage done over the last four years.'â€
The “damage done over the last four years†was to clean it up.
The “damage done over the last four years†was to fix it.
Elections have consequences.