RUSH: (accent) El presidente is going to declare a national emergency this afternoon after this program. El president is addressing the people of America at 3 p.m. Eastern Time. National emergency. I’ll tell you what that means as we get rolling here, folks.

JOHNNY DONOVAN: And now, from sunny South Florida, it’s Open Line Friday!

RUSH: I have to tell you, I’m just… (sigh) I’m gonna have to be so careful today. The smart thing for me to do would have been to call in and say, “You know what? Not feeling it today. Maybe I should stay home.” But I didn’t do that. The evidence is I’m here. But, I mean, I am primed to jump into this with both feet. (sigh) You know, I’m not a conformist, and I’m watching all this go on, and I just can’t believe it.

Major League Baseball is delaying the start of the season for two weeks. Zeke Emanuel of Obamacare fame is saying this could go on for a year! I’ll get the exact… Zeke Emanuel says it could go on for a year. De Blasio says New York will not be the same for six months! Come on. Zeke Emanuel says we are gonna be in this situation for a couple years — I’m sorry, a couple years! Folks, we’re gonna be in this situation for a couple of years.

The mayor of New York, Bill de Blasio, says the New York crisis will last six months. A bunch of Democrats who spent the last three years telling us what an authoritarian and dictator Trump is are now bellyaching and whining and moaning he’s not doing enough! If you want to know what the Green New Deal would look like, you’re starting to see it. You’re starting to see what will happen.

No airplane flights from Europe. No airplane flights to Europe, except for the U.K. If you want to see what the Green New Deal, if you want to see what climate will do to your world, you are watching. It has been right now under the guise of dealing with the coronavirus. Now, look. I understand. You know, the ChiComs are already over the hump on this. The ChiComs are seeing…

They’ve gone over the hump and now that they’re seeing reduction the number of cases and all that, and the story behind that is… Did I play the Open Line Friday jingle or not? (interruption) I did or didn’t? (interruption) I did? Okay. Good. ‘Cause it is Friday, right? (interruption) Anyway, the ChiComs are over the hump, and you know why? Do you know why, everybody’s saying?

“Because the ChiComs got a handle on it and they locked down Wuhan! They locked down their country.” Oh, goody! So the way to fix this is to empower the central government to lock everybody down. Wow! Doesn’t that make you feel better? “That’s what we’re gonna do, Rush.” How many deaths have we had, ladies and gentlemen? I have the number right here in my formerly nicotine-stained fingers — and, Brian, you can put ’em up on the Dittocam.

Put up the first one I sent you with many different colors in the circle. There you go! Here we go. U.S. coronavirus deaths by state. Total: 40 deaths. That big blue circle… If you don’t have this on the Dittocam, if you’re not a subscriber — if you’re cheap and you haven’t joined RushLimbaugh.com — fear not, because we will put this graphic on the website, on the free side there.

But just for now, the big blue portion of that circle is the state of Washington with 77%. It’s 40 deaths; 77% of those deaths have occurred in Washington state, where a Democrat’s the governor (slap me), 10% of the deaths have occurred in California where a Democrat (slap me) is governor, and 5% of the deaths have occurred in Florida. That’s the gold section there, where a Republican is governor. Slap me. I’m making this partisan. See, I shouldn’t be doing that.

I’m violating all the tenets. And then the other 3% in New Jersey, 3% South Dakota, and 3% in Georgia. That’s as of yesterday, 40 deaths. Forty deaths! There have been 40 deaths, and Major League Baseball’s delayed the season two weeks. The NBA has suspended the season. The NHL has suspended the season. The charitable golf tournament I was gonna play in, they’ve canceled that on Monday (snort), and what else? Oh. The Masters!

Augusta National! They’ve postponed the Masters until who knows when. They hope to get it in later this year. Let’s see. (sigh) Now, put the next graphic up, Brian. The solid blue circle here is next coming up on the Dittocam. There you go. You know what this shows? This is death by age of the coronavirus. The giant blue is plus 50. The green is under 50. Oh, wait! There isn’t any green. It’s plus 50.

Of the 40 deaths that have occurred, 77% occurred in one place: A nursing home in the state of Washington where a Democrat’s governor. Pardon me. I know doesn’t have anything to do with anything. If they’re gonna politicize this, then I’m gonna politicize it. Hang on. I am just getting started with this. So that blue circle that you see there represents all 40 deaths in America for which our country is being shut down.

And that blue circle represents deaths of people 50 years of age or older.

The green in that chart there, that diagram, is people under 50. There isn’t any green.

There’s no green there.

That’s as of yesterday.

Now, can I go back and remind you of something? 2009-2010 swine flu, Barack Hussein Obama, first year as president, 60 million Americans infected in a 10-month period, 300,000 hospitalized. 18,000 deaths. This is just 10 years ago now, folks, 10, 11 years ago. We didn’t suspend anything. We didn’t stop anything. The Masters happened. Major League Baseball season happened. The NFL draft and the NFL season, the preseason happened, spring training happened.

Do you realize what it takes to cancel March Madness? Do you realize what it takes to cancel the NCAA basketball tournament? Holy smokes. And then Adam Silver, who is the cadaver-like commissioner of the NBA said, “Hey, you know what, when I announced that our season has been put on ice, not one owner asked me about money.” So we’re supposed to think that the owners of the NBA are stupid? Not one of them is concerned about money? And then Mark Cuban, who is the owner the Dallas Mavericks said, “Wuh wuh wuh wuh do we have insurance?” So an owner did ask about money.

But, folks, look. Again, 2009-2010, swine flu, that’s deadly. Sixty million infected, 300,000 hospitalized, 18,000 deaths. I went back to the archives, the Grooveyard of Forgotten Sound Bites, and we found something here from May 1st, 2009, October 25th, 2009. So we’ve got a montage here of the Drive-By Media praising President Obama after a thousand Americans had died. At the time this montage begins, a thousand Americans had died, not 40, 1,000 Americans had died, Obama finally declared a national emergency after a thousand deaths. And listen.

OBAMA: (5/1/2009) We don’t know for certain that this will end up being more severe than other seasonal flu’s that we have. This is why this is a cause for concern, but not alarm.

FREDRICKA WHITFIELD: (10/24/09) Something that is concerning a whole lot of people these days, we’re talking about the H1N1, and now, the president, President Barack Obama, declaring the swine flu outbreak a national emergency.

ELAINE QUIJANO: (10/24/09) Should there be a worst-case scenario, but administration officials are emphasizing here, Fredricka, it’s not that they are expecting one.

DR. NICOLE LURIE: (10/25/09) Well, the first thing to say is people shouldn’t panic when they hear this.

RUSS MITCHELL: (10/25/09) Health officials battling the H1N1 flu virus this weekend have received two booster shots of their own. President Obama has declared the virus a national emergency.

LESTER HOLT: (10/25/09) More than a thousand people in the U.S. have died from the H1N1 virus, 90 in the last week. When we hear emergency, alarm bells start to go off, what exactly does this declaration mean?

RUSH: What does this declaration mean? It means Obama’s doing a wonderful job. Why, after a thousand Americans assumed room temperature, Barack Hussein Obama declares a national emergency, and he’s praised to the hilt by the Drive-By Media.

Here, up next is sound bite 10. This is Juliette Kayyem. Juliette Kayyem, this is this morning on CNN’s New Day and Alisyn Camerota talking to former Homeland Security assistant secretary Juliette Kayyem. “Every administration briefs the incoming administration about global pandemic, right? Isn’t this one of the scenarios that you game out?”

KAYYEM: Remember, President Obama’s first major crisis was not terrorism. It was H1N1. That hit us like March or April of our first year. Then later on as Lisa Monaco, his Homeland Security advisor, said yesterday, her outgoing briefing was a pandemic briefing. So we knew that this was coming.

RUSH: Oh, yeah, we knew this was coming, absolutely. We in the Obama administration, we were competent, we knew it was coming and we told other people that it was coming. Right. Okay. So again 60 million infected, 300,000 hospitalized, 18,000 deaths, the president praised to the hilt for astounding, competent leadership. Forty deaths in America so far. The numbers of people infected are in the thousands or less. And our president today is being portrayed as incompetent, bumbling, idiotic, and buffoonish.

And we’re all at great risk. And so the country has to shut down because Trump is such an idiot. The country has to shut down because that’s what the ChiComs did. No, the ChiComs did not shut their country down. They shut down a city. They isolated a city, maybe a province. They didn’t shut down the whole country. They only shut down the parts of China that would harm America, by the way. The iPhone manufacturing factories, they shut down parts of China that would impact the United States. But they didn’t shut down their whole country.

Places where the ChiComs trade freely and share a lot of travel, like Italy, are experiencing a lot of different cases, a lot of increased number of cases compared to here. But, I mean, I’m at home yesterday minding my own business, I’m sitting there on the sofa in my library, not bothering anybody. And I’m looking at this thing, it’s announced it’s shut down, that’s gonna get shut down, it’s closed. And I can’t believe it.

Then I get the call at my own charity — well, not mine, but the charity golf tournament I’m playing in on Monday has been shut down, too, and I said, “Well, hey, let’s play anyway.” I told the organizer, “I’ll come out and play.”

“No, no, because I’ve five other events I’m involved in that have been shut down and I need to go get drunk.”

I said, “Oh. Well, I don’t want to join you in doing that. I need to keep my wits about me because I have a radio show I have to host sober.”

He said, “I understand.”

Now, I have a story. You know, me, folks, I’m not a conformist. I don’t go along with the conventional wisdom and it gets me in trouble sometimes. And I have here a story published yesterday at a website called TechStartups.com, and it is a story based on a couple tweets that were published by a biologist at MIT. You know what MIT is, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It’s a deep state university. I mean, the people that go there, the people that get in there, it’s in the Harvard Ivy League world of things.

And there’s this guy there — and I don’t know for how long he’s gonna be there after this — his name is Dr. Shiva Ayyadurai. And I know that because I’m a highly trained broadcast specialist, so I’m an expert at pronouncing names of people outside our own country. Dr. Shiva Ayyadurai. He’s an MIT scientist and researcher on the human immune system. He tweeted that fearmongering on the coronavirus is gonna go down as one of the biggest frauds to manipulate economies he has ever seen.

He thinks the media, and in his own terms here, the deep state, are doing the world a disservice by exaggerating the impact of this virus, said it’s time to stop scaring people and start talking about immune health. Dr. Shiva may be right, says Tech Startups. I can’t believe I got a thing called Tech Startups that’s not some uber-left publication, but they say that Dr. Shiva may be right. Back in October — and now see here these guys, I like this because these guys are starting to use the swine flu numbers from 2009 that nobody seems to be paying any attention to.

How in the world do you go from doing nothing when 60 million are infected, 300,000 hospitalized, and 18,000 people dead and the president gets praised for fast action and decisive action, and we’ve got 40 people dead and the president’s being held up as an absolute buffoon and we’ve gotta shut down the country for this. Oh. Forgot. Trump has also announced he’s gonna cancel his rallies ’til further notice. That is mission accomplished as far as Trump’s political opposition is concerned.

Dr. Shiva Ayyadurai said it’s time to stop scaring people, start talking about immune health. He may be right.

“Back in October 2009, the swine flu killed 1,000 people in the U.S. — no, it’s 18,000 “– including almost a hundred children before Obama declared a national emergency. ” A 1,000 people before Obama declared — by the way, what is a national emergency? It just means the federal government’s gonna give money like you’ve never seen ’em give money to anybody who needs it, makes a claim for it, or wants it.

At the time the media hysteria was nonexistent. I wonder why that is? Because they were trying to sell Obamacare at the same time the swine flu hit.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: I have also here a little bit of show prep. It’s an editorial from Investor’s Business Daily, and it too is pointing… I have sought allies today, and I have found them out there in various crevices and pockets of what we call the media. The Drive-Bys are covering the coronavirus completely differently from how they covered the swine flu, folks, and people are starting to notice.

I just hope it’s not too late. This editorial from Investor’s Business Daily points out what I’ve been saying since yesterday, maybe even the day before, about the complete difference in coverage of the swine flu… (interruption) No. Okay. It’s not the actual 19th version of the coronavirus. It’s the coronavirus 2019. There’s a bunch of different coronaviruses, however, and this is the one dated for this year. It’s named 19 for 2019.

But there’s more than one of them, and they’re basically common cold viruses, is the point. I got the nitpickers out there that never think they’re wrong about anything who are constantly wrong and then love to correct me. But see, when you’re right as often as I am, people love to correct you when they think you’re wrong. Anyway… “A Tale of Two Pandemics: Media Downplayed Swine Flu Outbreak Under Obama.”

This basically restates what I have been saying the past two days. Let me read to you a couple of segments, pull quotes. “The day after the World Health Organization declared the coronavirus a pandemic, and President Donald Trump gave a national address, CNN’s front page was almost entirely devoted to. On thenewsstands, two-thirds of the New York Times’ front page was devoted entirely to coronavirus stories. …

“But the media coverage of the outbreak in the weeks leading up to Wednesday was just as breathless. … The day before the WHO’s declaration of a pandemic, for example, CNN posted a story calling the coronavirus outbreak ‘unprecedented in modern times.'” Well, it’s not unprecedented in modern times! The swine flu in 2009 dwarfs what is happening today. “When the WHO declared the swine flu ‘unstoppable’ on June 11, 2009, CNN didn’t even lead with that story on its homepage.”

You couldn’t find evidence of it!

The World Health Organization on June 11th, 2009 — this is Obama’s first year in office — labeled the swine flu “unstoppable,” and CNN didn’t even lead with the story. “It was in a pile of links on the side of the page. … A week later, there was no mention of the swine flu anywhere on CNN’s home page. The WHO’s announcement rated only a photo on the New York Times’s front page, with a story that was buried on page A11.

“When Obama declared a national emergency,” finally, after 1,000 deaths, “CNN didn’t get around to mentioning the death toll of the disease until the 10th paragraph” of the story. “By that point, millions had been infected and 1,000 people in the U.S. had died. The day after Obama’s declaration, CNN carried only a single link to the swine flu story in its ‘Newspulse’ section. It ranked below the headline: ‘Wayward flight’s co-pilot denies arguing.'”

In other words, they buried the swine flu story! The Drive-By Media, CNN, New York Times buried the swine flu story even after 1,000 people had died. That’s why you don’t remember it. That’s why when we talk about it, “Rush, I don’t even remember the swine flu!” That’s right. Because the media was protecting and guarding President Obama so that he wouldn’t be negatively impacted by it — and don’t forget, Obamacare was on the drawing board!

They wanted to push the idea that Obama was a health care expert, that he alone was going to solve this major problem. So the swine flu comes along — 60 million people infected, 300,000 hospitalized, 18,000 dead — and not a single story until after 1,000 deaths. And even then, they were buried. All because the new president — the first African-American president, historic — had to be shielded, had to be protected.

Obamacare, the policy that the left was advocating, had to be shielded and protected. And that’s why you don’t remember it. It’s media. The Democrat Party. You might say, “Well, what about the Republicans, Rush?” Well, Republicans (chuckles), it never occurs to them — here we have a disease out there — to blame it on the Democrats and to politicize it. It just never occurs. The Republicans don’t proactively do anything. They’re totally reactive. They react to things, like they’re doing now.

That’s how the Democrats constantly set the agenda. That’s how the Democrats set every premise in American politics. The Republicans react to it, respond to it. Case in point: Obamacare. Obama and the Democrats propose a national health care plan. The Republicans, instead of saying, “Screw that! We don’t need a national health care plan,” they come up with a “smarter version,” they say. They come up with their own. They accept the premise.

But it would never occur to the Republican leaders at the time to take the outbreak of swine flu and somehow try to blame it on the new president. Plus, there was no way it was gonna work anyway because the first African-American president had just been elected and any criticism of him at all would have been tarred and feathered as racist. So the Republicans were neutered. But here with Donald Trump, it’s the exact opposite.

We’ve got 40 deaths, nobody under 50 has died, and 77% of the deaths are in one state and one nursing home. Major League Baseball has shut down. The Masters golf tournament has shut down. The NHL has shut down. The NBA has shut down. My charity golf tournament on Monday has shut down, and everything else is gonna be shut down. It just doesn’t make any sense. It doesn’t make any sense.

“Well, Rush, we gotta get a handle on this. We can’t afford to let this thing get out of control.” What…? Even if you look at the worldwide numbers — and I’ll get the exact numbers in a minute. But the fact of the matter is that if you have worldwide 100,000, let’s say 150,000 cases — it may be higher, I’m just using a top-of-my-head memory — 65% have recovered from it.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: All right. Here is the number. I have the official Johns Hopkins website. There are 137,445 cases of the coronavirus worldwide; 80,940 — basically 81,000 of them are in China. So we’ve got — I know numbers are kind of hard to follow on the radio. I’ll try to make it as simple as I can. We’ll round off: 137,000 cases worldwide. Worldwide. In the United States, 1,268. In the United States, 40 deaths. Nobody under 50 has yet passed away because of the coronavirus.

Worldwide: 137,000; 81,000 are in China; 15,000 are in Italy; 11,000 are in Iran; 8,000, South Korea; go all the way down, 1,268 in the United States. But the point is — oh, and the numbers of people recovered, 70,000. Of the 137,000 who have been reported with the virus worldwide, 70,000 have recovered. And the death total worldwide, 5,088.

In the United States, 2009-2010, less than one full year, there were 18,000 deaths due to the swine flu, the pig flu, for those of you in Rio Linda. There were 60 million Americans infected and 300,000 Americans hospital. Can I give you these numbers again? Coronavirus worldwide, 137,000. Swine flu United States, 60 million. Deaths worldwide coronavirus, 5,000. Deaths United States swine flu, 18,000. Deaths United States coronavirus, 40. And the numbers of people that have recovered around the world, 70,000.

So the recovery rate’s just a little over 50%. And it keeps climbing. The death rate here is the usual 1%. The point is that the reaction that is taking place in this country is totally out of control. It bears no sense of proportion to any previous outbreak. And yet there are people loving this. The news media’s absolutely loving it. The people that publish these stories love writing these headlines.

They love scaring the hell out of you. Bernie Sanders is out now joining the irresponsible. Crazy Bernie is warning of coronavirus meltdown on a par with World War II, calling for drastic action to combat the spread of the disease. The crisis we face from the coronavirus is on a scale of a major war. We must act accordingly. Forty people in America are dead, and none of them under 50. “Are you saying that those deaths don’t matter?” No. I’m not saying it. Do not put words in my mouth. I’m not saying anything of the sort. I’m just asking for some sense of proportion here.

So what have we done with all this? Well, Major League Baseball has shut down, will delay the regular season amid coronavirus worries. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, the IQ of a pencil eraser, has banned all gatherings of more than 500 people in New York state, which means that Biden campaign rallies will still be permitted. Well, they had to pick a number.

They couldn’t shut down Biden rallies, but they had to close down Trump rallies, so under 500 people. This is what Andrew Cuomo is saying. If you’re in a group of under 500 people, the odds are that nobody in that group’s gonna have coronavirus. But you get in a group larger than 500, like at a Trump rally, and the odds are that you’re gonna die. And so we’re gonna save you. New York bans gatherings of more than 500 people.

There are some up sides to this. Joy Behar took a leave of absence from The View due to the coronavirus. Why? Is there something that we don’t know about those women spreading disease via that show?

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Our enemies, our geopolitical enemies around the world have got to be watching this in stunned disbelief at how easy this is or has been. For me, folks, it’s unbelievable to watch this. Not just the level of panic, but the lemming-like attachment to it that happened almost at breakneck speed and continues.

(interruption) I know the swine flu… (interruption) People are shouting, “The swine flu!” at me. The big difference is the media didn’t talk about it in 2009. CNN? After 1,000 people died, CNN still hadn’t made it a front-page lead item! Ditto the New York Times. Much less was there any criticism of Barack Hussein O over it. I continue to watch all this in almost disbelief. The Democrat Party? The Democrats have been running around talking…

You’ve heard it! “Trump is an authoritarian! Trump is a dictator! Trump is a mean-spirited idiot. Trump’s this or that.” Now, here’s a tweet from Chris Murphy, senator from Connecticut. “Why have an executive branch if it isn’t willing to lead at a time like this? All of these decisions to cancel events and close schools or postpone opening days have been made by state, local, and private sector leaders. Why is everybody else leading except for the president?”

So the president is exhibiting federalism. (laughing) He’s not an authoritarian. He’s not a dictator. He’s not ordering sports leagues to shut down. They’re letting ’em decide on their own, and the Democrats are mad at him for not being a dictator! They’re mad at him for not being an authoritarian. These people can’t see straight. They can’t be consistent if their lives depended on it.

So, Mr. Murphy, I don’t know if you realize this or not, but you have inadvertently here blown up your party’s entire narrative that Donald Trump is a dictator and authoritarian by complaining that he’s not being dictator-like nor authoritarian enough. Can you believe it? (grumbling) “We have all these sports leagues shutting down and schools. Why isn’t Trump ordering it be done?”

They’re now trying to say Trump’s lazy. He’s not even attached, he’s not even doing his job. He doesn’t even know what’s going on because everybody’s having to take over their own businesses and lives and make their own decisions. It’s called federalism, Mr. Murphy, where all meaningful control happens at the most local level of it, where people are most directly involved.

It’s the way our government was set up, sir. We don’t have a monarchy or dictatorship. We don’t have direct democracy. People are not stupid, Mr. Murphy. When they have the facts, they do just fine. The problem is, there is such a shortage of real fact about this that it’s frightening.