RUSH: Okay, folks. A case in point right here in my formerly nicotine-stained fingers. The very top headline on the Drudge page right now is this: “Top Doc: Virus 10 Times More Lethal Than the Flu.” Now, wait. That’s not the lede. They’re burying the lede. That headline is gonna scare people to death. It’s an outrageous headline. The headline comes…

It’s not Drudge’s headline. The website is called The Week. “Coronavirus Is 10 Times More Lethal Than the Seasonal Flu, Trump’s Task Force Immunologist Says.” That’s not the point of the story. Do you know what’s really the point of the story? The fatality rate is just 1% from this disease! So who cares if it’s 10 times more lethal than the flu?

The fatality rate of the coronavirus is 1%. “Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told lawmakers during a House Oversight Committee hearing Wednesday that COVID-19 — the disease caused by the novel coronavirus — is probably about 10 times more lethal than the seasonal flu. …

“At the same time, he did clarify that 10 times figure actually brings the new coronavirus’ fatality rate lower than official estimates, which hover around 3%. The flu has a mortality rate of about 0.1%, so … Fauci places the new coronavirus’ lethality rate at somewhere around 1%.” That’s the story. It isn’t that it’s 10 times more lethal than the flu, and this is how this crap gets politicized!

Pardon my yelling, but this stuff is what ticks me off, and my instincts tell me this. I know this kind of trickery and monkeying around with stuff is going on in these things because I know the media, I know the left, I know the Democrat Party, and I know how they’re trying to scare everybody — and now they’re using Fauci here. (panicked) “This is Trump’s guy! Trump’s guy is saying it’s 10 times more lethal than the flu,” which means nothing.

Ten times more lethal? Lethal than what? What does lethal mean? Does lethal kill you? Does lethal infect you? Does lethal give you a temperature of 102 versus 100? What does it do to you? It’s a meaningless comparative. Ten times more lethal? The only thing worth knowing in this story is that Anthony Fauci says the fatality rate of coronavirus is much less than what they believed.

It is 1%. It is not between 3 and 6%, and that number 3% and 6% has been out there for a couple of weeks. So here comes a news story saying, “Guess what? The fatality rate’s only 1%,” and that’s not the headline. The headline is: “Coronavirus Is 10 Times More Lethal Than the Seasonal Flu, Trump’s Task Force Immunologist Says.”

Well, yeah, he may have said it, but it was a setup for the actual lede in the story, and you have to read to the last paragraph to get to the nut. “At the same time, he did clarify that 10 times figure actually brings the new coronavirus’ fatality rate lower than official estimates…”

So what the hell is the point of a headline that says the coronavirus is 10 times more lethal than the flu, if what that means is the fatality rate is actually much less than we thought it was? It isn’t 3 to 6%. It’s 1% tops. So, no, I’m not apologizing for one damn way I’ve approached this today, and I’m not gonna apologize. Not that anybody’s demanding, anyway.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: So this is how it works. I’m just watching CNN during the break, and Jim Acosta is saying (summarized), “It’s not going great for the White House today! Anthony Fauci has been contradicting the president all day, and most recently pointing out that the virus is 10 times more lethal than the flu.” So the Drive-By Media has their headline based on something Fauci said, but they’re leaving out the lede.

They’re leaving out the main point that Fauci made.

They’re even lying about Fauci “contradicting” Trump all day long now. “Anthony Fauci’s got his work cut out for him. He’s having to contradict the president all day long by pointing out today that the virus is 10 times more lethal than the flu!” It doesn’t matter! What Fauci said is that “10 times more lethal than the flu” figure actually brings the coronavirus fatality lower than official estimates!

Why can’t they say that? Why can’t they say that the new discovery is that the coronavirus fatality rate is not 3 to 6%; it’s 1% and falling, by the way? Why don’t they say that? Well, because it doesn’t fit the agenda because there’s a political agenda behind this. They have weaponized this, and they’re doing everything they can to damage Trump.

This is no more than the continuation of Trump-Russia collusion and the meddling and all that, and then you have the Ukraine impeachment phone call. It’s so tough not to just blow my gasket sitting here, folks, because every day my instincts are proven right on the money. Don’t ever become a conformist. The best way to be made a fool every day is to become a conformist.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Okay, Keith in Palm Bay, Florida. I’m really glad you waited. I appreciate your patience. Hello.

CALLER: Mega dittos, and prayers for you and your family, Rush.

RUSH: Thank you very much, sir.

CALLER: Being a longtime student of yours — and even though me and Jeannie are Boomers — we still stay informed as much as possible. We haven’t panicked. We are still treating this like flu or anything else. As far as preppin’, because of the government and hurricanes, we’ve already been prepped. The only thing I had to get was some Louisiana hot sauce.

But I do have a concern after seeing a report from the End of the World News out of Italy. As you know, Florida is a microcosm of Italy in population and age, you know, The Villages and assisted living on every other corner. Their report was about hospital capacity, and they said because of the panic of the public which the media is ramping us up into, their hospital capacity is so overwhelmed that their doctors are literally becoming death panels and deciding who is healthy enough to treat and who is not.

So I hope Florida is ramping up on their hospital situation. You know, I think it’s ridiculous that local paramedics and firemen say that they’re not ready. They’re waiting for word from the federal government. Haven’t we been ramping up for this pandemic for a long time? Don’t they already know? I mean, a lot of this is common sense. And I do have a little disagreement on your sneezing situation.

RUSH: A little disagreement on the sneezing situation?

CALLER: Yeah. I wouldn’t hit ’em. I’d kick ’em in the royal jewels and then get (crosstalk) afterwards.

RUSH: Well, yeah, it’s degrees. How much pain you want to inflict if somebody with the virus sneezes on you? Look, I’m looking… Here’s CNN. “Coronavirus Probably 10 Times More Lethal Than Seasonal Flu.” It’s not the… Why don’t you tell people what you know? They’re just openly lying to you, folks. “Well, did Fauci say it?” Yes, Fauci said it, but he also said what it means is the fatality rate for this virus is not 3 to 6%.

It’s 1%. The point of the story is they have learned that the fatality rate is not nearly as high as they thought it was for coronavirus. That’s what CNN ought to be telling people! Dishonest bunch of SOBs is what they are. They’re doing it on purpose. They know full well! If I can read the story, they can. Fauci knows how they’re misreporting it.

Where’s Fauci correcting them on this?

Now, about your point about Italy and Florida. I haven’t forgotten it. Here’s the thing. You people may not know this, but the ChiComs have been buying up Italy faster than you can say “coronavirus.” The ChiComs have been buying up the Italy soccer league. There is so much travel between China and Italy, you wouldn’t believe it — far more than there is between China and Florida.

The virus does not know Italy from anywhere else. The virus can only go where people who have it take it. Italy is not getting this virus because they got so many old people stranded on street corners. Italy’s not getting the virus because there’s a bunch of water flowing around Venice. Italy is getting the virus ’cause a lot of travel happens between China and Italy.

The state of Washington is getting hit because there’s a lot of travel between China and the state of Washington. It’s the same thing in California. Now, if you can find where a lot of people from China are traveling to Florida, or a lot of people in Florida have gone to China and come back, then you have reason to be concerned.

But Florida is not Italy simply because of an elderly population. The virus does not say, “Yeah, you know what? We only get elderly people! So let’s go where they are. How ’bout…? How ’bout we go to Italy?” And one virus says to the next virus, “Fine! We’ll meet in Italy. See you.” That’s not how it happens.

Viruses have carriers. Same thing we were talking about here with this containment story. The containment story is a fool’s errand. We don’t contain anything. Viruses contain themselves. Curing a virus is containment, and we haven’t cured a virus yet, folks. We have vaccines, but we don’t have a cure for a virus. We have success with vaccines like polio and this kind of thing, but in terms of a cure, that’s something mankind hasn’t come up with.

Ebola. We don’t contain Ebola. Ebola runs out of healthy hosts by killing them. So the way to contain Ebola is to make sure that people who get it are quarantined, sadly, but that’s it. But we don’t contain it with medicine that attacks it. We contain Ebola by making sure it runs out of healthy people to infect. It’s the same thing with a lot of other viruses. It’s gonna be true with the coronavirus as well.

You’re being set up. When these same lying SOBs at CNN tell you that containment efforts are failing, well, guess what? They’ve never succeeded in the sense that CNN’s trying to convince you. We can’t contain the virus by coming up a medicine that stops it. Have we contained the common cold? Have we contained the flu? No. People who get it have to have it run its course. There isn’t medicine that shortens the cold.

You can go get over-the-counter things to treat symptoms, and if you get the flu you can ask people to give you some IV fluids to speed your process through it, but there’s no containing it. The language and the way the media is treating this virus is they’re setting everybody up to be fooled into thinking that we can contain others but we can’t contain this one ’cause this one’s really bad, this one’s really bad because of Trump or whatever connection they’re trying to make.

We don’t contain the cold. We don’t contain the flu. You get it, you get it. There’s no stopping it. You can get a flu shot, but that’s not gonna guarantee you don’t get the flu, is it? How many get a flu shot and still get the flu? Then you tell yourself, “Well, it’s not gonna be as bad because ’cause I got a flu shot.” It may be just as bad. We don’t know. How many of you get a common cold shot every year? Oh, yeah, there’s not a common cold shot. Wonder why there’s not a common cold shot?

You ever wondered with the most common virus in the world, why we can’t stop it, why we can’t contain it, why we can’t cure it, why we can’t prevent it? It’s the common cold, for crying out loud. It’s a runny nose. It’s a cough. And we can’t even stop that. It’s the most basic virus there is, and we have absolutely nothing we can do about. And we’re being told, we may not be able to contain coronavirus.