RUSH: San Luis Obispo, California. Randy, great to have you, sir. Hello.
CALLER: Yeah, hi, Rush. Good to talk to you again. Strength to you. I know what you’re going through. Listen. The thing with the coronavirus that struck me is that we don’t really know what the denominator is. I’m a physician and, you know, whenever you’re talking about statistics you always gotta know what the denominator is. And in this case, we know about the fatalities, but we don’t know about the real number of people that are carrying the virus. I mean, it may be that a large number of people are carrying the virus, and if that denominator gets really big, then the fatality rate, you know, from this disease really drops.
There’s no doubt that it’s a dangerous and a nasty disease. But the fact is we need that number. And one of the ways to do it would be just bite the bullet and test everybody in the country, you know, go do a nasal swab on everybody. And then at least you’d have the numbers. You’d have the number of the denominator, and then you could see whether, hey, is this really a highly fatal disease or is this something that’s not any more fatal than the common flu, in which case we already kind of have targeted people. We know the 50 and particularly the 60-and-up age-group are the higher target people. It may be that holds out the same. And so, you know, that’s how you combat fear and panic, is you come in with numbers and statistics and knowledge. We’re not doing that.
RUSH: Wait a minute. You just zeroed in on something. Let me ask you a question.
CALLER: Yes.
RUSH: And if you don’t want to answer it, feel free. I’m not trying to put anybody on the spot, especially you here. How many people do you think really want to avoid the panic?
CALLER: Well, I think just like in a lot of voters, I think the silent majority would like to have the knowledge and would like to avoid the panic, but I think that as you’re, I think, indicating that there are a large number of people that —
RUSH: Those people have nothing to say about who’s getting tested or not. This is a government operation. By the way, about getting tested, I didn’t think we had enough test kits to test very many people.
CALLER: Yeah, that definitely is a limiting factor. But, I mean, still you can at least take, you know, a large swath of the population and test them all. Yeah, ideally you’d want to test everybody, but of course it’s gonna be limited by the number of test kits that you can get available, but you still could test, you know, a large amount even if it’s a million — I think they talked about having four million test kits available or gonna be available soon.
You know, if you tested four million and it turned out that of that four million, you know, maybe two million, you know, had the virus, but in fact, you know, two million and you divide the number of deaths by that two million, you say, well, gosh, it’s really a very low number, you know?
And it’s really not any more deadly than the flu. And this is not to say not to use good public health standards like what they’re talking about, trying to limit congregation of large crowds. But, you know, the economic effect of this is gonna be so big as it is, you know, I mean, all these things are being canceled, you know, the economic effect —
RUSH: By the way, speaking of that, the University of Wisconsin has just been canceled until April the 10th.
CALLER: Yeah! I mean, it’s a huge amount of money you’re talking about. And the constant —
RUSH: It’s a lot of learning that’s not gonna happen, either.
CALLER: Pardon?
RUSH: It’s a lot of learning that isn’t gonna happen. The university has been canceled until April the 10th.
CALLER: Yeah. Well, yeah. And you’re seeing all kinds of this, and how much is the economic effect? And if you went out and you tested everybody it would cost a lot of money, but it would be a one-time thing. You’d have a much better handle on what your real number is as far as fatality rates. And then you could make some more reasonable, you know, guided plans as such. I mean, you cancel a lot of these concerts now that are predominantly young people that go to them. And, in fact, those are the people that, you know, it’s a very, very low fatality rate.
RUSH: Right.
CALLER: So maybe you don’t have to cancel all those concerts that young people go to. I’m just saying, you don’t know if you don’t have a number. And right now we don’t have a number.
RUSH: No, we don’t. And that serves the political objectives of quite a few people.
CALLER: Very definitely.
RUSH: If we don’t have the number, we can say it’s whatever we want it to say. We can project it to be as bad — like I just saw Governor Inslee of the state of Washington going through a mathematical progression with a bunch of “ifs.”
CALLER: Right.
RUSH: “And if this and if this, if this, if this. We could have — we could have — we could have four million infected if there’s ever -” Whoa, four million. Wait, slow down, dude. What are you talking about here? “Well, if and if and if and if and if.” And then they brought somebody, “Well, his math is right, but we don’t know if anything he said is right.”
CALLER: But that’s the denominator.
RUSH: Yeah.
CALLER: That many may be infected, but if that many is infected, that actually says, “Well, this isn’t as lethal a disease as we thought because we pretty much know the fatalities.” That’s a number you can measure. I mean, we have ’em pretty much.
RUSH: Why does nobody talk about the number of recoveries, Doctor?
CALLER: Well, you’re right. I mean, I hear it every once in a while, but it’s kind of always like a side comment —
RUSH: Right.
CALLER: — at the end of some fearmongering. And, you know, until you have those numbers — and we could get better numbers than we have. I mean, you know, ideally you want to test everybody. Okay. You can’t test everybody, but you could test a very large number, and that could really give you an idea as far as how —
RUSH: It’s a good point. Doctor, it’s an excellent point. Thank you very much for calling. I appreciate it. Sadly out of time. I just saw there’s a TV commercial for the Harvey Weinstein walker that you could buy now.
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RUSH: Bob in Kalamazoo, Michigan. I’m glad you waited. You’re next, sir. It’s great to have you.
CALLER: Rush, thanks for taking the call, and my best to you. Hope things work out.
RUSH: Thank you, sir, very much.
CALLER: The reason I’m calling, I may be part of the unknown denominator that the doctor talked about earlier. January 11th is my birthday and the celebration was canceled. Me and my wife both had something. We both get flu shots. We’re 67 years old. We’ve never had an illness like we had in the middle of January. And what it turned out to be was, for my wife it was six days of a fever over 101. During two of those days she hit 104. And I came down with it about seven days after she did.
RUSH: Let me ask you a question. Did you two die and you are speaking to me from beyond the grave?
CALLER: No, I have not died yet.
RUSH: So you survived this?
CALLER: Yes, I have. But it was unlike — I mean, at our age, we’ve had our share of flu and cold, we get flu shots. This wasn’t like anything we had before.
RUSH: Okay. So you’re thinking you might have been a carrier, you might have this. And so I know what your point is. How do we know that — like you’ve had this, maybe this has been around a lot longer than anybody knows, and a lot of people have survived it?
CALLER: Yeah. Why would I think that the Chinese are gonna tell us information until they absolutely have to? So what I’m thinking is this may have been something that’s been in the country since, you know, I don’t know if it’s November or December —
RUSH: This is the reason I wanted to take your call. I’ve had a lot of people advance this theory. Victor Davis Hanson, by the way, a good friend of mine, actually thinks that this thing has been around for a long time, that a lot of people have been carrying it who have not suffered from it, a lot of people have gotten it and survived it, and that it’s not nearly the deadly or damaging thing that we’ve all been led to believe. Glad you called, Bob.