RUSH: I’ll tell you something else about this plunge in the oil price that’s causing the stock market to be down whatever it is. It’s 1,700 now. The White House is talking about targeted stimulus to help businesses that have been hurt by what we could call “virus terrorism.” Could I give you some contradictory facts on the coronavirus? You just do with it what you want. You tell me I’m crazy. You tell me I’m not concerned enough or what have you. But I want to go down the list. You know, every election year has had a disease as part of it.

Are you aware of this? No, you’re not, because you’re living in the moment and thinking about the future, which is responsible and reasonable. That’s what everybody does. You just can’t change the past anyway. In 2004, we were all told about SARS; in 2008, the Avian flu. Remember that? The bird flu! In 2010, it was the swine flu. In 2012, it was MERS, M-E-R-S. In 2014, it was Ebola — and we’re still hearing about that because we’re hearing how brilliantly Obama dealt with Ebola.

“Oh, if we only had Obama now,” they’re saying. In 2018, Ebola made a reappearance. In 2016, it was Zika. Remember the Zika virus? All of these things, now you remember them? Every election year has one of these. Now two… (interruption) No, no, no. I’m not saying the coronavirus is fake or fraudulent. I’m telling you it’s a ChiCom disease. You know, all of this stuff with the Italians? Something that you may not know about the ChiComs and the Italians, folks.

You’ve heard about the massive numbers of cases of coronavirus in Italy. What you may not be aware of… I’m looking for it right now. Here we go. Ready for this? Italy has seen billions and billions and billions of dollars invested there by the ChiComs. One example: There’s a professional soccer team in Milan that was purchased by the ChiComs. I’ve talked to people that were in Italy three years ago. It’s loaded with Chinese people. The Italians travel to China more than ever now due to the Chinese investment in Italy.

The numbers for Italy and the coronavirus could well be associated with the increase in Chinese investment in Italy, which has resulted in an increase in the amount of travel between people of the two countries. So much investment, so much business between Italy and China now and for some years, means a huge amount of travel between these two countries. Italy is obviously smaller, much more condensed than China. They got different lifestyles, everybody closer, going out, much smaller country.

But there’s a reason. “Why Italy, Rush?” Ask anybody. Are you asking, “What is it about Italy? Why is Italy having to quarantine one-fourth of their country? What’s happening?” Well, it’s not hard to figure out. The ChiComs have been buying up things in Italy like crazy. It’s been spawning all kinds of travel. This is a virus. In fact, you know what? The real name for this thing instead of coronavirus ought to be the Wuhan virus.

But you know what happens if you call it the Wuhan virus? The left will come out of the woodwork and accuse you of being a racist and a xenophobe. They’ll accuse you of trying to tie the virus to the ChiComs. Well, hell’s bells, folks, that’s where it came from! The coronavirus, COVID-19, came from Wuhan, China. That’s where it came from. Now, if it’s racist to point that out, then it’s racist to point that out. But it’s something that’s unavoidable.

So in all of these years — 2004, 2008, ’12, ’10, ’14, ’16, ’18 — there’s been a virus in an election year. Now, the coronavirus has a contagion factor of two. The SARS contagion virus was four. Measles, for example, was 18, the contagion factor. I keep talking about the Johns Hopkins University website. The one thing about coronavirus that nobody trying to stoke panic about it will ever tell you about. You go to the Johns Hopkins website and look at the number of cases and the number of deaths. The percentage isn’t changing.

In fact, the percentage of death is actually falling in relationship to the overall number of cases. But you know what number is rising? The numbers of people who recover from it. Well over half of the people who get it have already reported recovering from it, and they never tell you that. Now, it’s not 75 or 80% yet, but it’s gonna be at some point. Law of averages. Right now, the coronavirus has a cure rate of 99.7% for those under 50 that it infects. This virus is really attacking the elderly who already have underlying respiratory problems.

It’s a respiratory disease. You could even call it a “viral pneumonia” if you wanted to among those it infects. It is not infecting the real young, but it is devastating people who are over 65 or 70, who have an underlying respiratory problem. But it apparently is not wiping out healthy people in their thirties or forties or fifties. Now, don’t misunderstand me. I’m not… I’m just going to tell you facts about it. I’m not even giving you opinion associated with the fact.

You see what can happen when you offer just a contravening set of facts. (griping) “Well, Limbaugh’s not taking it seriously! Limbaugh’s being irresponsible.” I’m not being irresponsible at all. I’m telling you the facts associated with this. Here’s the bottom line: The White House is talking about targeted stimulus to help businesses hurt by the virus. But look at what’s gonna happen with this plummeting oil price. Do you know the many industries that could save? Try the airlines. You know what’s gonna happen to jet fuel here?

Jet fuel costs are gonna come down just like gasoline prices are gonna come down. You know what jet fuel is? It’s Jet A. You see it on the trucks if you’re at the airport, if you’re watching trucks run around to refuel. Jet A is kerosene. That’s what you smell. There’s no greater smell by the way than Jet A on the ramp at an airport. It’s one of my all-time favorite smells. It smells like progress. It smells like power. It smells like speed. It smells like progress.

Robert Duvall loved napalm in the morning in Vietnam.

I love kerosene on the ramp at an airport.

You can’t smell it unless you’re outside. It doesn’t permeate the walls. If you’re in the terminal, you won’t smell it. You might get a vestige of it. But that’s what it is, and it comes down in price just like the price of gasoline does. Now, let me expand on this for just a second because the news behind the market whatever you want to call it today, the market collapse. That’s not the word. The market’s down 1,500 now. This is because of an action taken by Saudi Arabia against Russia and OPEC.

They’re flooding the market with cheap oil. The market is reacting to the impact on producers. But of course, when the price of oil comes down dramatically, look what happens. Let me state again: The world — not just the United States, the world, the world economy — is governed by the free flow of oil at market prices. And when something happens to interrupt either the flow or the market price, then tumult occurs, and that’s what we’re seeing here.

But as the price for producers plummets, guess what also comes down? The price to consumers — and this is a benefit. It’s gonna benefit the airlines because jet fuel’s gonna be cheaper. It’s gonna benefit you, the consumer, buying gasoline. Whenever your energy costs go down significantly, that’s a huge percentage of every family’s budget that reduces, and it leaves more disposable income for other things, including debt reduction or what have you.

There’s any number of positive things for the consumer that are gonna result from this. Now, if I’m right, I mentioned last week that I actually think the coronavirus has been around for a while and it just hasn’t been known because it’s not affecting everybody. It isn’t infecting everybody. I think it’s been around for a while. And, as such, if it has been around for a while then, folks, it isn’t as lethal as we think or fear it is.

If it has been around for a while — and we don’t know that because not everybody that comes in contact with this is infected by it — then it isn’t gonna end up being more lethal than swine flu or regular old store-bought influenza A. And if it’s no more lethal than that, then we have a baseline. As the president’s pointed out, the number of people that die from the flu every year is 18 to 30,000.

Well, we’ve come to accept that without panicking about it, without demanding scalps. We’ve just come to accept it because we intellectually have accepted what the flu is. So if this virus ends up being no more lethal than that, then we have a baseline, then we know that it’s not gonna be that much more contagious. Then when we finally do start testing everybody, we are going to learn that lots of people have been exposed and test positive who do not have symptoms.

Now, if I’m right about that — and I hope that I am — can you imagine the great news that’s gonna be perceived as, that all kinds of people test positive for it but don’t have one symptom. Do you realize what that’s gonna mean for people? It’s gonna be a big deal.

But it’s also gonna mean more panic because the agents of panic are gonna see that and they’re gonna try to ratchet up the panic, “You mean that people don’t even know they’ve got it? Oh my God, that’s horrible.” No, no. Wrong way to look at it. But the panic, more panic will be ginned up as testing reflects not a big increase in the spread, but rather a big increase in the number of confirmed cases, or rather our knowledge of what’s been going on in the prior weeks.

In other words, if a lot of people test positive but don’t have a symptom, well, reasonable people, “That’s good, that’s positive.” But others, “Oh, my God. It’s incubating. Oh, my God. It’s gonna be worse than ever.” So you’re gonna be faced with the agents of viral, virus terrorism even more than we have them now.

But I believe that there is an upside here for Trump if he can admit to the public the dangers of short term panic, that they’re real, but then reassure people that the rebound and upsurge is going to follow because this is going to pass, it’s gonna end as it always does. If people are panicking, if people have a short-term panic, acknowledge it. Don’t tell ’em they’re wrong for feeling it. It’s a lost cause.

And that’s not who Trump is anyway. Trump relates to people. Trump understands. If people are panicked, they’re panicked. Don’t tell ’em they’re nuts. That’s the wrong way to go about it. Not that he is. He’s not doing anything of the sort. I’m just saying resist the temptation. Because at the end of the day the real danger here is economic damage, but only for a brief period of time. We have low oil prices. We have low interest rates. And that’s gonna cause some people to panic, and the people that panic produce the charts in media that make it look like the bottom’s falling out.

Like today the stock market down 1800, down 17, “Oh, my God. It’s horrible.” No, actually for you the behind the scenes news is good. Your gasoline price is gonna be coming down. “Well, I don’t want to look at it and be that selfish.” Well, you can’t. It’s not selfish. Markets are like that. Good news for some is bad news for others. It’s always been that way. There’s no utopia out there.

The question is, my friends, can we get over this hump before the fall, the season, before fall hits? ‘Cause there’s gonna be a big rebound from this. This is only human nature. This is one of the easiest predictions I’ve ever made. The day is gonna come where this is gonna be over. The day is gonna come where people are gonna feel safe again. And whenever that day is, whenever that week is, there’s gonna be a rebound like you can’t believe.

People leaving homes, people going back to cruise ships, people getting on airplanes, people going to the movies, whatever they’re gonna do, it’s gonna end. The question is, can that end before the fall and the election cycle at that time. Or does it happen close to the election, Trump gets blamed, the upswing comes in November, too late. I mean, these are things, if you’re gonna look at this politically — and the Democrats are forcing us to — then this is one of the ways that we look at it.

But Trump has got to anticipate this. He’s gotta anticipate the Democrats are gonna plan to blame him for this. They’re gonna try to prolong this. They’re gonna try to extend this. Even when the rebound happens the Democrats are gonna try to make people believe there isn’t one, it’s premature. They politicize everything. They are politicizing this. As such it’s going to have to be responded to just like the Trump-Russia collusion crap was dealt with, the phone call to Ukraine.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Brainerd, Minnesota. This is Trent. Trent, great to have you, sir. Hi.

CALLER: Rush, absolute honor to talk with you, man. I’ve been listening to you since I was about 9, 10 years old. My mom and dad introduced me to you and just a huge fan.

RUSH: Thank you.

CALLER: So thank you for taking my call. And I hope you don’t think I’m crazy right away with this theory here. But getting back to the coronavirus, you know, many are probably gonna think this is a conspiracy, but, you know, what I wholeheartedly believe is that the ChiComs put this out. You had mentioned earlier that it was affecting only the elderly. And it kind of made me think about it.

And, you know, was this put out by the ChiComs and engineered to hurt the elderly, the nonworking class citizens in order to scare the overall general population off the street, you know, the thousands of freedom protesters that were out there. Did the ChiComs want them off the streets? And was this engineered to attack the elderly, the nonworking class citizens and not necessarily hurt the overall general working class citizens? You know, it might seem kind of crazy, but —

RUSH: Well, if that was the purpose, you’d have to say they lost control of it, right?

CALLER: Right. Right. Yeah, there would obviously be some collateral damage around the world affecting, you know, the —

RUSH: I’ll tell you why. Because there’s video in Wuhan of ChiCom authorities storming into people’s apartments and just wrapping ’em up and taking ’em out of there, young people, not elderly. If your theory is a way to rid the elderly and keep the young from going out in public, the video I’ve seen, it’s not nearly representative of enough, but…