RUSH: I mentioned Alex Berenson. Alex Berenson is a former New York Times reporter (which gives him credibility, you see) and he’s pointing out, he’s tweeting, he’s writing, he’s speaking. He’s essentially saying that the models, in addition to being wrong about the way over-projection of deaths were also very wrong about places like Florida where mitigation wasn’t imposed until relatively late.
He said the models are wrong about Oklahoma where there were no lockdowns. So among the things that Berenson is saying, he says, “There doesn’t seem to be any correlation between the lockdown and whether or not the epidemic has spread wide and fast.”
Now, those are fightin’ words to Dr. Fauci and the Scarf Queen and others in the medical community who want to believe that social distancing and mitigation is the sole explanation for any improvement in anything, and I’m here to tell you — and I’m just a layman — social distancing cannot explain California.
It cannot explain the state of Washington. It cannot explain Oregon. Remember those two stories we shared? There were stories all over California in November and December about a new flu outbreak that people were getting. Some people were dying from it. They just thought it was the flu. It no doubt was corona, but nobody knew it.
It hadn’t been clarified. It hadn’t been quantified. It was just there. You know, corona, I think, first hit the public lexicon in December when a ChiCom lab technician in Wuhan started warning people about it, and then he quickly disappeared. Nobody could find him. They still haven’t found the guy. I think they know that he died.
That’s right. He died from the virus. But in November, October-November in California, people had it. I’ve talked to people who were in Wisconsin and Illinois over Thanksgiving and Christmas who came down with something that just… It had ’em down for two weeks. They plugged through it. They just thought it was the flu or a bad cold.
Now they are convinced it was corona. Last fall. This would explain the wide number of people, large number of people with immunity to it now who built up antibodies to it, which is, you know, along the way toward creating herd immunity. Herd immunity, by the way, is how a society deals with and builds up immunity to these things.
Herd immunity is not a bad thing.
It’s a very naturally occurring event based on human behavior, based on people being outside and contracting the virus. If you’re sick, you stay at home. If you’re susceptible, you stay at home. If you’re young, healthy, in the low-risk category, you go out. You mingle, you do your thing, you do your job and what have you. And people were doing this unaware that there was a new virus.
Alex Berenson said, “The precipitous drop in cases…” He says, “Aside from New York, nationally … the hospitals are empty.” You’re not supposed to say that, by the way. You’re not supposed to report that. You’re not supposed to repeat that hospitals are empty. You’re not supposed to collect video showing a lack of activity in hospital beds.
I’ve had people call this program — nurses — who say they are on call, and they’ve not been called in various parts of the country. So Alex Berenson “said the precipitous drop in cases has occurred before lockdowns would have had a chance to have an impact, saying it would take several weeks for social distancing measures to take effect … and there’s a two-week lag between the onset of symptoms and death.”
So he’s wondering, “Why have we shut down the country?” And, man, are they going after this guy on the left — oh, especially because this guy used to work at the New York Times. He’s the worst kind of apostate. He’s a heretic. He’s a traitor. This guy deserves to be sent to the gallows. “‘Why Have We Shut Down the Country?’ Ex-New York Times Reporter Challenges the Dire Coronavirus Models.”
Here’s a longer story — and the key to this is, “There doesn’t seem to be any correlation between the lockdown [of people] and whether or not the epidemic has spread wide and fast.” Do you realize how contrary to the conventional wisdom that is? I mean, those are fighting words from Alex Berenson.
“There doesn’t seem to be any correlation between [locking people down] and whether or not the epidemic has spread wide and fast.” There might be. I’m using Berenson here. If there’s one Berenson, there’s a bunch of ’em out there; we just don’t know who they are. There may be a tsunami building as people start to realize that most of what they’re being told may not be true.
It may be partially true, may not be credible, because all of the models have failed. All of the models have been wrong. If a model has to be tweaked every time new data comes in, it’s a bad model. Stop and think of it. You have a model. It’s gonna project death and hospitalization due to coronavirus.
You plug in your numbers, factor in social distancing, and say, “Oh, a hundred thousand to 240,000 dead.” Then they have to tweak every time new data comes in that shows their original projection was wrong. They have to tweak the model. Why do they get away with this?
How do they maintain no accountability? How do they maintain credibility? How do they get to tweak their models? Because they’re doomsayers, and the doomsayers are never wrong. See, models are supposed to predict the future, not conform to facts already in evidence. And the models are being used politically by people who have an agenda. The models are being used to conform to facts or to confirm facts, not actually predict the future, ’cause if their primary objective is predict the future, they’ve blown it.
The next question is why the slavish attachment to models that have been wrong from the start. Speaking for myself, if I had a source for information that I trusted enough that I would repeat whatever the source told me about anything to you through the Golden EIB Microphone, and then I learned this source was wrong about everything. I would dump the source, I would apologize, I would beg to forgive you and I’d come close to identifying the source. I wouldn’t do that, but I would certainly tell you that I have been hoodwinked, that I have been wrong and I am terribly sorry.
There hasn’t been any of that. There hasn’t been any acknowledgment that the data has been wrong. There hasn’t been any apology for it. Instead, there has been a slavish attachment to these models despite the fact that they’ve been wrong. So I, nicknamed Mr. Curiosity, want to know why. Why the slavish attachment to stuff that’s wrong? Why no acknowledgment that it’s been wrong? And why, when they do attempt to cover-up for the fact they’re wrong, “Well, we just now started to factor in social distancing.”
No, you didn’t. Social distancing has been part of the model equation since day one. So was it hubris? Is it overconfidence? Is it incompetence? Or is it something worse? Is it intentional misinformation for whatever reason these people might have in mind? The fact is these models, like pretty much everything else in government, have been hijacked by the left-wing Democrat political agenda.
So two things, two things could happen after this is over — and it will be over. It will be ending. And your town, which is a ghost town, will not be a ghost town. There will be hustle and bustle. You will be up and about and out and around. So the two things that could happen after this is over. We either lose all confidence in our establishment elite government actors — folks, I’m telling you here, I predicted my first day back after being gone for two weeks, I was so bad, I didn’t even know how long I was out. I had to ask Snerdley.
My first day back, I started in on the models because I know how worthless they are and how they’ve been used in climate change. And I said there’s gonna be a debate over did we need to shut down this economy? And that debate is going to happen, particularly as the death rate continues to fall, it is going to happen. Now, what’s gonna happen along with that, we’re either gonna lose all confidence — and I’ll tell you something else. To a lot of people in this country, that confidence has already gone. To a lot of people, legitimately and understandably, the confidence in government expertise has already vanished. Either that or we’re gonna have greater confidence in them than we ever did. Don’t know how it’s gonna shake out yet.
This reporter, Alex Berenson, is a leftist, his leftist resume is perfection. But apparently he can independently and critically think. Apparently he is curious along with being a leftist. Makes him an oddity. He has been sounding the alarm on numerous fronts. I’m sure he’s been kicked out of all the clubs now. Here’s a pull quote from the story that I have on Berenson from Fox News.
“‘I went to Yale and I worked for the New York Times, the people on the left hold themselves out as being science-driven, as being smarter, they think they’re smarter but they won’t look at facts that won’t meet their narratives,’ he said. He voiced frustration that these arguments have been ignored by a lot of mainstream outlets. ‘That is frustrating for me … but everyone needs to hear this counterargument, whether or not it’s right, you need to hear it because the damage we are doing to ourselves right now is so enormous.'”
Is it really necessary? He’s not satisfied that any of this has been necessary. He said, “the left holds themselves out as science-driven.” They’re not science-driven. They have distorted the definition of science. The minute they attach the word, say, “consensus” to science, they’re admitting it’s not science. There’s no consensus to science. Science is not up to a vote. This may surprise some of you young people. Scientists don’t vote on what they think is science and what isn’t. But in order to persuade the unwashed and the uneducated, they think that there is power in telling you the consensus of scientists agrees in man-made climate change. Well, there is no consensus. Science either is or isn’t. It’s not up to a vote.
Berenson said, “Aside from New York, nationally there’s been no health system crisis.” Our health system has handled everything thrown at it outside of New York. “In fact,” he writes, “to be truly correct, there has been a health system crisis, but the crisis is that the hospitals are empty. This is true in Florida where the lockdown was late, this is true in southern California where the lockdown was early, it’s true in Oklahoma where there is no statewide lockdown. There doesn’t seem to be any correlation between the lockdown and whether or not the epidemic has spread wide and fast.”
I love the focus on hospitalizations. It’s been one of mine.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Back to the phones, Mark in Houston. You’re next. Hello, sir.
CALLER: Hello, Rush. Regarding what you said earlier about listening, I just want to say: I always have said, “For a deaf guy that talks a lot, you’re the best listener I’ve ever heard.”
RUSH: (laughing)
CALLER: But I do want to say about Dr. Birx, her number one priority about a month ago had to do with one thing, and that was the amount of hospital overflow. That has been taken care of; I thank her. She needs to get all the accolades along with Dr. Fauci, and they have — we have — accomplished that task.
I have gotten more educated about personal hygiene, and for the rest of my life I will look at germ warfare in a different way, and I thank her for that too. And so now congratulations. She has accomplished the task, and it’s time for us to move forward, and we can handle anything that springs forth.
RUSH: Well, this is an interesting point. Mark here has an interesting observation. What he’s saying — ’cause he said a lot there. He said that the original reason for the lockdown of the country and the shutdown of the U.S. economy was not just social distancing, but it was to clear the way for hospitals so they would not be overloaded, so that they could manage the overwhelming number of COVID-19 cases that were going to happen.
New York has the biggest pressure on the hospital system in the country, and the hospitalizations are coming down. They didn’t need the Javits Center emergency hospital setup. I don’t think they needed the hospital that was built in Central Park. In Seattle, they built a 250-bed hospital at CenturyLink Field. Not a single bed was used. So Mark’s point here is that the original purpose — to avoid overburdening the hospitals — has been met.
Well, but there’s also social distancing — and, by the way, these people are glued to social distancing. They not gonna give this up. So even if it could be demonstrated social distancing really doesn’t have anything to do with it in many places — which is Alex Berenson’s point. Alex Berenson’s point is that it’s too wide a variance in the number of cases in various states that had social distancing early or late or never. You would think there’d be consistency.
If social distancing is the determinator, then in states where there wasn’t any for a very long time, they should be overrun with cases. They’re not. They’re not in Oklahoma. They’re not in Florida, where social distancing was mandated late by the governor compared to other places. So his point is social distancing cannot be the explanation, single explanation. But Dr. Fauci and the Scarf Queen are wedded to it, and they’re not gonna come off of it, folks.
Just be prepared. They’re not going to come off of it, just like they didn’t come off “Trump colluded with Russia to steal the election.” They haven’t come off that yet. Oh, by the way, did you see Bill Barr? Bill Barr was on Laura Ingraham last night, and he said that Durham is not just looking at a report, Durham is looking at indictments. I told you when Durham put together the grand jury that indictments were gonna be coming.
Barr gave a lot of advance information about how Durham’s investigation is going — and Barr has even said that he thinks this reaction to coronavirus has been way over the top, particularly shutting down churches. You know, government has the power to do it, but he thinks that it’s been… It was fascinating.