RUSH: Here’s Jamie in Trenton, Michigan. Hi, Jamie, welcome to the EIB Network. Great to have you. You’re first up today.
CALLER: Hey, thanks, Rush. I just want to make a quick point in regards to this whole temperature thing, in regards to this nurse having a temperature.
RUSH: Yeah.
CALLER: The CDC claiming, “Well, you know, it’s a 99.5 temperature, nobody has anything to worry about.” Well, that’s when she called in. Who’s to say she called in an hour before her flight and, lo and behold, two, two and a half hours later, mid-flight, her temperature could be 102, 103?
RUSH: Yeah, exactly right.
CALLER: So I don’t understand the point of saying the temperature was only 99.5.
RUSH: It’s the protocol. It’s the protocol. The protocol supersedes everything, common sense included.
CALLER: Right. And at what point do they start saying, “Okay, well, you know, every time we say something we’re off or somebody else is getting it,” and at what point do they start mandating that these people that are actually coming down with it, and everyone else around them that were in close contact, can’t go anywhere until those 21 days have passed? At what point do they start mandating this?
RUSH: Well, my fear is they’re gonna mandate a lot more restrictions than that at some point. My fear is they’re gonna use this for a whole host of things that they otherwise don’t think they would have the chance to do. We’ll see. Hope I’m wrong. Appreciate the call.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Now, there are other things going on out there, and I don’t want to miss them. I mean, we’re gonna slip away from Ebola here for just a couple of minutes. There are some other things happening, and I never want to have a single issue distract us from all the other things. Let’s be honest. They might be trying to sneak a bunch of stuff by us while everybody’s understandably focused, if not distracted, on this. But before I break away, I teased before the end of the previous hour a comment Frieden made on charter flights.
Speaking of the nurse. Vinson flew from Cleveland to Dallas on a Frontier Airlines jet. The director of the Centers for Disease Control, Tom Frieden, yesterday during a conference call with reporters said she should not have traveled on a commercial airline. The CDC guidance in this setting outlines the need for what’s called controlled movement. That could include a charter plane, that could include a car, but it does not include public transport.
Now, two things on this. Why insult this nurse? This nurse is not gonna charter a plane to get back to Dallas from Cleveland. Nobody’s gonna charter a plane. Who thinks this way? Drive? Doubt it. Bus? Already off-limits. And I also thought — this is the second point — I also thought that charters were bad and stupid. We played sound bites yesterday of Dr. Frieden on with Megyn Kelly on Fox News in which she said (paraphrasing), “Wait, if you ban commercial flights –“
He said, “You can’t get workers in and out if you ban travel.”
She said, “What about charters?”
“No, no, no, can’t do charters. Charters are much different than commercial. You may not know the difference, Megyn.”
“What do you mean? A charter takes off, it lands, it does its business, and it takes off and leaves. What do you mean, a charter’s different?”
We’re sending troops to fight Ebola in Liberia, are they all flying coach? Now we’re sending the National Guard. That’s the latest, we’re gonna send the National Guard. And by the way, I’m gonna jump the gun on something. AP has a story they’re waiting on, it’s gonna run later this afternoon, and it’s about the five nations in Africa who are going to say that they think they’ve had a pretty decent amount of success in containing the disease there. But that’s not the lead. The lead is they are going to credit the fact that they closed their borders.
The leaders of these five African nations are going to credit the fact that they closed their borders, that they had very strict border controls, and that’s how they feel they have been able to stop the wanton spread of Ebola from their countries. As I see the story, these guys seem to be more concerned about the spread from their countries than anybody here is concerned about acquiring it from their countries. In other words, they seem to be more responsible about it than people here.
You would think that leaders of these five African nations would get insulted if they heard people around the world say, “No, the way we gotta solve this is to keep it there.” It would be understandable if these African leaders said, “Oh, what, just subject my population to it? Well, screw you, man.” But they’re not reacting that way. They’re exhibiting a little bit more leadership, common sense, and responsibility than people in leadership positions in this country are.
She should not have traveled on a commercial airline. The CDC guidelines outline the need for controlled movement. Charter a plane, drive a car, but no, not public transport. You know, these guys, they love to talk facts. The fact is if we had a ban in place, Thomas Duncan couldn’t have simply hopped on a plane and brought this plague to the United States. It really isn’t any more complicated than that. It really isn’t. But, you see, to liberals nothing is simple. Everything’s nuanced and there are layers and levels that we average people are simply not capable of discerning. And even if we could discern them, we’re not clever enough to understand them. We’re not smart enough to understand the nuances and the intricacies and all the variables.
No, no, no. Not us. We simply are incapable. We’re not qualified. We’re not competent. We don’t see all of the deeply woven webs that they see, because we simply can’t keep up with them, you see. And, as such, they miss everything that’s right in front of them.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Here’s Joyce, we head back to Pittsburgh. Great to have you on the EIB Network. Hello.
CALLER: Hello, Rush. Good to talk to you again.
RUSH: Thank you very much.
CALLER: My question that Mr. Snerdley and I were discussing is we keep hearing about the nurse that went from Cleveland to Dallas. Why is nobody saying how on eartyh did she get from Dallas to begin with to Cleveland? There’s another flight there.
RUSH: Yeah, this came up yesterday and these are the obvious questions that everybody’s asking. She had come in contact with the Ebola patient, he had died, what is she doing flying? Everybody says, where are the controls?
CALLER: Right. And not only does she fly, you know, from Cleveland back, but gosh, she exposed another plane full of people on her way up.
RUSH: Yeah, and it took ’em five days to take these planes out of service. Now they’re sterilizing the planes and they’re trying to track down the people that were on those planes, 132 passengers, I think, on the flight from Cleveland to Dallas.
CALLER: Right. And how long can the virus live outside of the body, you know, on the plane in upholstery and everything else and how many different crews —
RUSH: If they’re telling us — (crosstalk)
CALLER: — keeps going on and on.
RUSH: If they’re telling us the truth of the survivability of the virus, it’s hours. I think between three and five hours that it survives on a tabletop, for example, or maybe on currency, on money, for people that still have some of that. They’re telling us it’s really, really hard to get, and we can only hope that they’re shooting us straight on this.
CALLER: Well, I don’t know about you, but there’s nothing I trust that comes out of Washington anymore.
RUSH: Well, I’ve been that way for a while. It’s not personal. It’s because I know that this bunch especially politicizes everything. And don’t forget, gang, this is also the party of Rahm Emanuel who said, “Never let a crisis go to waste.” The ultimate political comment. And there was a part two to that. The reason you never let a crisis go to waste is because “it allows you to do things that you otherwise couldn’t do,” which means government power. (interruption) A question from the Official Program Observer. What is it? (interruption) If the virus only survives on surfaces for a few hours, why are they sterilizing the planes?
Well, if both are true, they’re sterilizing the planes for public relations. They don’t want to have to put this plane out of service. These things are expensive. They don’t want to have to send this plane to the desert in Arizona and park it forever. So they’re gonna go through the motions of sterilizing it. By the way, do you know what kills Ebola on the surface? Bleach. Bleach kills it. So they’re bleaching things and all that. So both could be true. The virus could only have a life span of hours on a surface, but for public relations consumption, whatever, they would still wipe down the airplane no matter what, just to let everybody know.
(interruption) People don’t know that they’ve been on this plane, for example, when they… (interruption) So what are you saying? They shouldn’t bother sweeping down the airplane, then? If people don’t know which airplane they’re getting? (interruption) No, it’s not a waste of time if they’re really doing it. This is one of these things that you have to do for show, even if that’s the only reason. If you had 132 people that were on that plane and you’re trying to track ’em down and you want to keep that plane in service, you have to realize some journalist is find out what airplane that is, and there will be stories saying what flights and routes that airplane is being used by Frontier, and people, if they find out, won’t take that plane.
Snerdley, you have to know that the media is gonna get to the bottom of it. If they didn’t sweep this plane down there would be an all-out full-court press to identify it. (interruption) No, I’m saying in this case the media would love to take out Frontier, not Frontier specifically, but if no effort was made to wipe down this airplane — let’s say it’s Abdullah Airlines. I don’t care what it is. If no effort was made to wipe down this airplane and the media saw that, then they would find out, “Okay, is this plane still in service, and if it is, what routes is it on,” and they would write stories telling people. They have to do it. Whether the virus didn’t survive in there or not they’ve gotta do it. It’s only common sense.