RUSH: Well, I guess the big news now is Fredo Cuomo of CNN has tested positive for coronavirus and will be quarantining in his basement. His brother, the governor of New York, Andrew Cuomo, has just revealed details of all of this, continuing to speak about it. It was almost a life review here of Chris Cuomo, how he became a lawyer, then a journalist, and how the dad was a very domineering personality and told Fredo that he better become a lawyer. It’s kind of… I don’t want to characterize it. But it was strange for somebody still alive.

Greetings, and welcome, Rush Limbaugh, the EIB Network at 800-282-2882. The email address, ElRushbo@eibnet.us if you want to communicate that way.

And once again great to be back with you. I have an overriding sense of foreboding here, folks. I’m really in a dilemma as to how much of what I really think do I share with you. Some of it I can’t. I’d be run out of this studio if I were to tell you some of what I think. And I’m talking about in terms of what needs to be done, not the circumstance that we’re in, but the solution, because the overriding sense of foreboding I have is that this cannot go on.

This just can’t go on. We cannot go on like this for months. We are going to destroy the country or the economy, however you want to look at it. The favorite word of Millennials is “sustainable.” Well, this isn’t sustainable. And we, as a society, down the road are going to be faced with some really, really serious questions that we cannot avoid. The longer we go, the more unavoidable answering some of these questions is. I don’t mean to be speaking cryptically. I’m doing something that’s somewhat uncharacteristic for me. I’m speaking safely here. I may dance around this, but this just can’t go on like this.

You know, somebody called me yesterday, “Rush, what do you think the recovery will look like?” And I kind of blew the answer. I was getting my feet wet yesterday. I’ve been gone. I’ve been gone for — how many shows did I miss in a row? I was in such a fog, I don’t even know. Was it five or six? It was 10 shows. My absence was not a vacation. I was not staying informed as I was away because I was not capable of it. So getting back yesterday was to get the voice back up to shape, in shape and in gear and getting my brain back up to speed and engaged. And so I kind of blew the answer.

I said it’s gonna roar back. Wait a minute. That’s not true because it’s gonna take what to roar back? It’s gonna take money. It’s gonna require people having money to roar back. And the longer this goes, the less people, the fewer people are going to have any money to ignite the economy. Now, there will be stimulus impact, no doubt about that. There will be a recovery, don’t misunderstand. But the guy wanted to know, is it gonna be massive all at once, and I said, no, it won’t be that. It will be phased simply because even if that magical day comes where somebody says — who is it gonna be? Who is going to say, “Okay, folks, go back to work”? Well, the president might or might it be Dr. Fauci. But whoever says it are people gonna go, “All right!” And leave. Or are they still gonna be a little trepidatious?

Because all of this, all of this is based on one thing that we don’t have. We don’t have a vaccine for this. We don’t have a vaccine, and until we get a vaccine — like I was just listening to Governor Cuomo here, he was giving his daily briefing to the people of New York. And he said that when we finally get a test, when we get a widespread, quick test to determine who’s got coronavirus and who doesn’t, that will determine when people go back to work. Well, that would be great, but I don’t know if that’s true.

Okay. So you test negative, but there’s no vaccine out there. What happens if everybody heads back out? And folks, a vaccine is not on the horizon for at least a year. They’re doing clinical trials on drugs. You know, the chloroqiune and zithromiocin is the most promising thing. If there is developed a medicine that can deal with this, then that would change things dramatically and hold the line until there is a vaccine, but a vaccine, that’s what separates the coronavirus from the flu. We’ve got vaccines for it, we know the mutations. We’re not up to speed on the coronavirus in that way.

So you have the medical reality and then you have the economic reality. This can’t go on. I mean, how many people want to see the United States economy destroyed? I doubt very many. But then what is gonna be required to prevent that from happening? People going back to work. It’s gonna be things reopening without a vaccine. What’s that expose people to? It’s a serious, serious question.

All I know is that what’s happening now cannot go on. This business of shutting down until the end of June or the end of July and putting people in jail if they leave their homes, which, what governor, Maryland said that? That’s not sustainable. That’s not — (interruption) Mr. Snerdley here with a little prof note saying the ChiComs are back to work. Don’t believe a damn thing coming out of there. They’ve already reopened the wet markets. They’re selling bats. They’re selling live bats for food at the Wuhan wet market. (interruption) I am not. They say that their number of cases is declining, the Chinese economy is getting back.

The Chinese government is so different, we don’t know what they did to make this possible. How many people did they drag out of their homes in Wuhan and just murder and then bury in concrete plots to get rid of this virus? They don’t have a vaccine, either. The ChiComs don’t have a vaccine. If they do, they’re not sharing it with anybody.

We’re not gonna do that. We’re not gonna drag people out of hospitals or out of their homes and take them and put them in what are called reeducation camps or whatever the Chinese do. Look, this is a communist government. They have an entirely different view of the value of life, the quality of life and all that. And if they detect any single person being a culprit here, that person is in deep, deep trouble if the state finds out about them.You can’t trust anything coming out of China. It would be great if it were true. It would be great if you could look at the Chinese model and say, “Okay. They’re back work, their number of cases is falling, their economy is getting back up to running, and it took three months. So using that as a guideline…” But we don’t see the same pattern happening here. However, there is this story. This is, interestingly enough, this is from CNN, but what is the actual source? The headline: “Coronavirus Death Rate Is Lower Than Previously Reported, Study Says, But It’s Still Deadlier Than Seasonal Flu.”

Now, this is a study from good old Imperial College, again, in London, which gave us this original model that 2.2 million Americans could die if we did nothing; 500,000 in the U.K. could die if we did nothing. Of course, we’re not doing nothing. We’re mitigating all over the place — social distancing, quarantining, sheltering in place, and all of this stuff.

But this study from the Imperial College in London — and it was published in a highly respected medical journal called Lancet — says that fewer people die from coronavirus than previously thought. In fact, this report from Imperial College in London says that 0.66% of infected people die. Now, that’s more than from the regular flu.

The regular flu mortality rate is 0.1%, but this is far lower than the 4% that we were told for months, and it’s lower than the 1%. Remember when Dr. Fauci… This is the kind of stuff, I must say, it irritates me. Dr. Fauci came out and reported that the mortality rate for coronavirus is much lower than we thought. This is two or three weeks ago.

But, he said, it’s still 10 times deadlier than the flu. Well, guess what the headline was? The story was the coronavirus is much less deadly than we were originally told. Then Dr. Fauci said, “But it’s still 10 times deadlier than the flu.” The reason for that is the flu mortality rate is 0.1%. The coronavirus rate at the time was thought to be 1% or 10 times 0.1% of the flu.

Now Lancet is saying that 0.66% of infected people die.

So the number of deaths from coronavirus continues to be reported as declining. “The study says the lower number is due to taking account of the number of people who have milder cases of the coronavirus.” In fact, Governor Cuomo today made a big deal about the big number of discharges from New York hospitals, people that no longer need treatment.

That’s one aspect of this that’s really not been reported since day one, since that whole John Hopkins website was first developed and first published. The number of recoveries has never been a singular item reported here, and then there is the undeniable fact that there are forces in the American culture who want you to continue to think the worst of this, and they want you to blame President Trump for it.

They want you to think it isn’t getting better, that it won’t get better because of Donald Trump — and now the My Pillow guy. (Man, what a teachable moment yesterday that was as well. We’ll get to all of this as the program unfolds before your very eyes and ears today.) So the researchers estimate that the overall death rate coronavirus to be about two-thirds of 1%.

But that number goes up in older adults: “7.8% of those 80 and older are estimated to die after getting the infection, but the deaths were estimated to be exceedingly rare in children younger than 9.” The fatality rate there is infinitesimal. So go figure. All I know is this is not sustainable.

Now they’re talking about giving everybody masks.

The surgeons are saying, “Ah, I don’t think we need to give everybody masks. You put masks on everybody and you’re just gonna create a psychological downturn.” This is not sustainable. I also want to share with you something Governor Cuomo said. He gave pretty rousing, attempting-to-be-motivating address here to the people of New York.

He put up a slide that said, “We know what we have to do; we just have to do it,” and here are the four things that we have to do, according to Governor Cuomo. We have to have “individual discipline.” We need “government skill and performance.” We need “social stamina,” and we need “national unity.” For what? To sustain this? The discipline to watch the economy peter out?

The discipline to watch government skill and performance try to manage the decline, once again, of the U.S. economy? Social stamina? Well, I know what that means. Social distancing and staying inside and having the discipline to do so — and national unity. Well, that’d be great, but we got people that are working on trying to prevent national unity where this is concerned.

So I don’t… That’s the overriding foreboding thought that I have — and, you know, who knows, folks. Listen to the whole program. It depends on where my mouth goes the remainder of the program. I might divulge even more of what I’m thinking here.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: I want to run a number by you, and I want to ask you if this number surprises you — and I’m gonna finish Obama’s tweet; then we get to the phones. If you’re on hold, hang on. We’re coming to you. Now, of course, we here at the EIB Southern Command are in South Florida. We’re in Palm Beach County, which geographically is a large county.

You look at the case data here for Palm Beach, the number of cases of coronavirus, the number of deaths. But one of the things that interests me is the hospitalization numbers. Because if you look at Drudge, if you look at the Drive-By Media, you would believe there’s not a single hospital bed in this country, right?

You have been led to believe that every hospital’s overflowing, that dead bodies are in body bags and refrigerated trucks that are being packed off to landfills or whatever. I mean, some of the most incredible reporting I have seen. It is in New York; it is in Washington, D.C., Maryland, the Eastern Seaboard states, that there’s not a hospital bed around, that the hospitals are overflowing.

If you have to go to the hospital, you may as well just pack it in and die. So I wanted to find out what the hospitalization rates were here in Palm Beach County, because we’ve been shut down like everybody else has. We’ve been shut down through the middle of April. We got, “Shelter in place, and you better not be caught on the beach.” The turtles can go to the beach and we can’t.

You better not get caught on the beach. You better not be caught within 10 feet of anybody else or they’ll write you up on the town website. (chuckling) Anyway, here’s the case data for Palm Beach County. “Total cases in Palm Beach County of coronavirus: 514. Of the 514 cases, 488 are residents of Palm Beach County; 24 are nonresidents.

The age range is 0 to 99: Men 268 cases, women 237. So it’s fairly equal. But there have been 11 deaths in Palm Beach County since this all began to be tabulated. Now, I don’t have data for other states. That will come at some point. I’ve got a website here. This is Florida’s COVID-19 Data Surveillance Dashboard, and it’s the latest official numbers from the Florida Department of Health.

I know numbers on the radio are tough to follow, but let me go again.

Total cases in Palm Beach County: 514.

Total deaths: 11.

Hospitalizations (the number of people who are hospitalized with coronavirus): 57.

Does that strike you as a large number? I want you to think of the way this is being reported, particularly about New York and other places where there’s not a hospital bed to be had, where they’re putting people in the hallways. There’s no ventilators. There’s no nothing. We haven’t got… We’re just in bad shape out there.

Of 514 cases, 57 hospitalizations. That sounds like a small number to me. Why aren’t the hospitalization numbers being reported to us? I mean, if you go to New York, a field hospital is being built in Central Park! We’ve got the Mercy ship that floated in there. They’re clearly trying to create the impression that we don’t have any hospitals.

We’re so overflowing with cases, that we don’t have any hospitals. Now, it may be true in New York. But, again, 57 hospitalizations in Florida… In other words, if you are in Palm Beach County and you happen to come down with this, there’s gonna be room in hospitals. I’m not urging people to go there. Don’t misunderstand.

So much of what happens during crises like this… So much of this has been politicized, folks, that it’s just impossible anymore to actually find factual truth.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: We’re gonna start with Chelsea, Chelsea in Cincinnati. I’m glad you called. It’s great to have you on the program. Hello.

CALLER: Hi, Rush. It’s been… It’s an honor just to hear your voice. I’ve been listening to you since I was a little girl.

RUSH: Thank you. Thank you very much.

CALLER: I’m concerned about what our country is gonna look like when this is over, specifically here in Ohio. We have a governor who’s been manipulating our state constitution. He’s a… (deep breath) Pardon me. I’m sorry. He unlawfully moved our March primary and then he closed down businesses and canceled schools.

All while manipulating our constitution saying it was for the public health. How many people are gonna be fine with it? But my problem with it the whole thing’s done illegally, and it sets a terrible precedent. (groans) So how do we return to the rule of law and keep our leaders from any party from ignoring the constitution?

RUSH: Ah, I know. Chelsea, these are all valid concerns. You know, I hearken back to my brief appearance via phone call myself. I now know what it is to be a caller, by the way, on this program. I called into my own show last Friday. It’s the only way I could do it.

I addressed the massive changes, that when this is over, what is this country gonna look like, what are the American people gonna accept. The mayor of New York literally said that if people went to churches or synagogues, he was gonna shut them down forever. Now, that’s the First Amendment. He can’t do that. (interruption)

Yeah, I’ve got it in the Stack. You missed that? You’re probably watching Tiger King. By the way, I am… (interruption) “They arrested a pastor for holding…” (interruption) I know. I know all of this stuff, and people are accepting it. Not everybody, but people are accepting it on the basis of the health things that we have been told we have to do.

Yeah, what is this country is gonna be like when this is over? You know, how long is it gonna take to return to what we considered normal? If you go back to the Civil War — and not a whole lot of people know this — Abraham Lincoln arrested and put in jail a chief justice of the United States. He suspended habeas corpus. But we came out of it.

We came out of it with the Constitution intact. We came out of it with our freedoms intact because the Civil War ended with the right, correct side victorious. Now, if you go to the 1918 Spanish flu? (Snort!) The government didn’t do diddly-squat about it. Woodrow Germany in World War I.

We didn’t do diddly-squat. We didn’t shut down anything. We didn’t do anything to protect people. We just let whatever number of people get the disease get the disease, and they died, and that’s how we dealt with it. If you got it, you got it. If you didn’t, you didn’t. But we didn’t shut down the economy.

They didn’t chain doors. We didn’t stop people from going about their business. We didn’t make people wear masks, any of that stuff. Of course, back then masks were not as prevalent; 1918 was a long time ago. In World War II, we suspended a lot of freedoms. We instituted federal withholding to make sure the government got its money to fund the war effort.

You know that’s when withholding started is World War II. (interruption) Yeah, you didn’t know that? Withholding of taxes began, and government-run health care got its start in World War II, centralize everything to make more efficient the war effort — and some of the things that were instituted survive to this day like federal withholding and number of other things, health care related.

So these are valid, valid questions, and arbitrarily delaying… Like the Democrat primary is considered to be over with because they have canceled all the primaries where Crazy Bernie might have a chance to regain his lead. But Crazy Bernie doesn’t care. They’ve bought him a plane.

They did something. He’s gone docile. Biden is nowhere to be seen. He’s gonna be the nominee. He can’t win it until June 2nd, and that’s when he’ll be proclaimed the nominee. But it’s fixed. It’s all rigged. Now they’re salivating over finding a way to get Cuomo to run. Things are in a huge, huge state of flux.

And the longer the American people are sequestered behind closed doors and not participating in anything, the more change there is going to be. I’m getting dangerously close to getting in trouble here; so I am gonna go to a profit center time-out.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Now official, the number of deaths from the coronavirus in the United States is greater than the reported number of deaths in China. That is just mind-boggling to me, but that’s what is being reported. Three out of four Americans are under orders to stay home. Seventy-five percent of the country under orders to stay home, and in some places they’re being threatened with jail if they leave home. This is not sustainable. This cannot go on, certainly with no end in sight.

Now CNN is reporting that Trump will formally unveil new distancing guidelines based on models. It’s CNN. So it could be BS. So we’re just gonna wait and see what actually happens. But this models business, well, that means that there’s no thinking involved here. That means we’re just reacting to whatever data is discharged in a computer model based on whatever data is put into it.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Manalapan, New Jersey. This is Robert. It’s great to have you on the program, sir. Hello.

CALLER: Hey, Rush. How are you feeling?

RUSH: You know, I’m feeling normal for the first time in about three weeks — and I mean normal-normal, for the first time in three weeks. Thank you very much.

CALLER: (garbled cell) I’m glad to hear that. That is my fifth time on your show, so I feel very lucky. I don’t know how I get through to your show so many times. (chuckles) What I want to say, I’m more concerned… Listen, the human race is going to survive this. We’ve survived wars, epidemics, flus, plagues. We’ll survive it. I’m more afraid of how we’re gonna survive the people in this country. I mean, you got people rattin’ out neighbors because they’re having parties in their houses. They’re calling the cops on them.

How quickly people are giving up their rights to move around freely, because they’re afraid government’s gonna keep them safe. I don’t know if we’re ever gonna come back to being the way we were. What’s gonna happen next year when it comes back again? Shut down the economy again and just stay home again? It just is insane.

RUSH: See, here we go. I understand your concern. It has long been a bugaboo of mine, a frustration of mine of how just naturally trusting people are in government. It’s something that’s bugged me my whole life, how people are just naturally trusting of so-called experts they don’t even know. But it’s just the way it is.

People just are. People want to believe the government’s looking out for ’em, the government’s trying to help them. They just do. Believe me, after 30 years of hosting this program, it is a monumental feat. It’s taken 30 years to persuade a whole lot of people that certain elements running government are not looking out for you, that they’re actually attempting to diminish you.

But you mention Dr. Fauci. See, Dr. Fauci said, “Well, it’s going resurface in the fall, but it won’t be the same because we’re gonna know a lot more.” It is gonna be identically the same! Oh, one other thing. I meant to mention to a previous caller, we’re now entering the spring. In most of the country, it’s warming up, and we have been told that the virus doesn’t do well as it warms up out there.

Outside the body — outside the body — the virus doesn’t survive well. So we’re getting into the feel-like temperatures in the nineties down here in South Florida. Finally. We’ve had a really rotten winter, folks. It never got above 75 down here all winter. That’s bad. I don’t mean to be complaining about it, but it’s just the way it is. At any rate. So that supposedly should be good news.

So Dr. Fauci was asked a question by somebody in the media, “Is there gonna be a rebirth of the virus in the fall?” “Oh, no question it’ll come back in the fall.” “Really? We know this?” “Yeah.” And then they said, “Well, that’s not good, Doctor.” “Well, no. No, we’re gonna know a lot more in the fall than we knew when this started at the beginning of this year.”

Well, we’re not gonna have a vaccine. Until we have had a vaccine, all this is academic, is it not? I mean, look at this. All of this social distancing, they say it’s working, and it probably is. But are we prepared for 18 months of this until we get a vaccine? Are we prepared for 12 months of this?

Do we get a vaccine or a pharmaceutical cocktail that defeats it, until there’s a vaccine? And we’re really hoping that chloroquine is it — and we’re also wondering if chloroquine is it, if anybody will actually admit it. So everybody quarantines or everybody social distances, and we flatten the curve.

We do a good job flattening the curve, and then somebody says, “Okay, we flattened the curve! We’re on the other side of the hill. We’re on the downhill side. You leave home now. You can go to work.” But wait. There’s no vaccine. People leave home, transmission starts all over again, and then what does government do?

“Uh! Uh! Uh! We released you too soon. You’ve gotta go back home, social distancing and so forth.” No, I’m just saying we have some serious questions that we’re gonna have to face and answer ’cause this is not sustainable. It just isn’t. Taking this economy back to recession or Great Depression circumstances, does anybody want that? So what’s the question?

Well, the question (chuckles) kind of asks itself, and I’m kind of saved by the bell here.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Here is Tom in Chicago. Great to have you on the EIB Network, sir. Hello.

CALLER: Thank you, Rush. I have to take umbrage with you calling this a Chinese virus. It is a communist virus. Understand that communism is all about moving wealth out of private hands into public control, and that social progress has advanced so far in China that these poor people don’t have enough wealth to get the basic subsistence of life.

They gotta go out and invent new food sources. They’re eating bats, for God’s sakes, and that virus is now bringing the same social progress to America. It’s descending on us faster than the headlines can keep up with it — and I’m not mad at the American left. They’ve been out there for decades clear about what their mission is.

I’m mad about our side for not recognizing this communist revolution taking place from the highest offices of government, media, and education. If we’re not willing to admit the enemy among us, if we’re not willing to prosecute treason where treason is found, then we should stop complaining about it; just accept it.

RUSH: Okay. Well, I’ll let that stand, as I know. I’m being inundated with people who have that point of view, that it’s not the ChiCom virus, it’s the communist virus, and we’re being overtaken. The Chinese communists are doing it. You’re the only person I know who thinks it’s happening without the cooperation Democrat Party, however.

Most people tell me they think the American left is the worldwide Communist Party now and that they are willingly subverting this economy and destroying it for the purposes of eliminating and wiping out capitalism. (chuckles) Whether that’s the design or not, that is happening. This economy is being shut down. That’s why this is not sustainable.

I’m sorry. I’m sounding like a broken record on this.

But it is not sustainable.

Are we just gonna sit by and watch $22 trillion…? That’s the value. That’s the sum total of the GDP. That’s the U.S. economy. Are we gonna sit by here and watch it evaporate? ‘Cause that’s what we’re doing under the guise of not losing any unnecessary life, meaning we want to try to save as many lives as we can.