RUSH: So let’s take a look at where we are. The moving lockdown goalposts.

Wait ’til you hear what we’ve got coming up in the Stacks of Stuff here. This is — and it’s gonna confirm all your instincts anyway. Two months ago, 2-1/2 months ago they were telling us, “We can’t open until we flatten the curve, and we have to flatten the curve. We have to save our hospitals. We have to save the health care system. We can’t open up ’til we flatten the curve!”

And all the while, trying to convince people that flattening the curve was actually curing or getting rid of the virus, which was never gonna happen by flattening the curve or staying home or locking down. Locking down was never gonna get rid of the virus. Then one month ago, they said, “We can’t open until we have massive testing. We can’t open until we have massive contact tracing. We can’t open ’til we got all these new things.”

Moving the goalposts. Two weeks ago, “We can’t open ’til we have a vaccine!” Today, “We can’t open until Biden’s elected!” As far as the people on the left are concerned, we can’t open period. We cannot have an economic rebirth. We cannot have economic growth, because all of this is tied to trying to tie Trump to what they’re trying to create as an economic disaster.

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RUSH: So far this morning, the Dow Jones Industrial Average is up around 600 points. Let me check it to get the actual most recent here. It’s 565… Let me get it right: 570 is what I’m showing here. So figuratively nearly 600 points up. Now, this supposedly is on big hopes for a vaccine and the economy’s reopening. But my friends, look, as we have said for weeks now, whenever there is good news, somebody always comes along, usually Dr. Fauci…

Who, by the way, has done a 180 now on reopening. You know, Dr. Fauci supposedly the gospel. Dr. Fauci comes out and says what I said two weeks into this — and, you know, he’s the oracle. (interruption) No, no, no. I don’t have any animus toward Dr. Fauci. It’s just a comment on media. More on it in just a second.

But whenever there’s any good news, somebody — usually it has been Dr. Fauci — comes out to rain on the parade, and it hasn’t happened yet.

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RUSH: Some interesting COVID-19 data. Chuck DeVore has a great piece at The Federalist. Here’s the headline: “Data: Left-Demanded Mass Transit Fueled Covid-19 Deaths — There appears to be…” This is a pull quote. “There appears to be no statistical connection…” I want to be very precise reading this to you, because this is absolutely true, and it’s gonna nuke everything we were told starting with these coronavirus task force updates by the science community and the medical community.

“There appears to be no statistical connection between improved health outcomes and pandemic policies that forced nearly 40 million people into the unemployment lines.” In other words, putting 40 million people out of work by shutting down, by locking down… There is no evidence that doing that improved anybody’s health. There is no evidence that sequestering people worked.

There is no evidence, data — none — that flattening the curve improved anybody’s health outcomes, anybody individually or in whatever demographic group. In other words, it was useless. It was unnecessary. Said another way: “There appears to be no statistical connection between the economic pain of the nationwide shutdowns and the number of COVID-19 cases or fatalities.”

In other words, we’d have the same numbers whether we shut down or not. This is data. This is not somebody’s opinion. He says, “Let that sink in for a moment, given we were told we had to lock down America to ‘flatten the curve’ and save lives,” and we had to protect our hospitals. “On the other hand, the data does suggest that reliance on mass transit is connected with virus cases and fatalities.”

In other words, Andrew Cuomo keeping the subways open for his essential people to get to and from work? There can be a statistical connection made between mass transit and increased cases and fatalities. But there is no statistical connection between the shutdown and the number of COVID-19 cases and fatalities.

Let me try it another way, because, folks, I think this is… (sigh) What’s the term? This is Moneyball. “Allowing for the fact that some places, such as Hawaii and Nevada, are heavily dependent on tourism while others, such as Connecticut and the District of Columbia, have a large share of white-collar workers who can work from home, the data shows no connection between the increase in unemployment and either COVID-19 case rate, fatality rate, or even age-adjusted fatality rate.”

In other words, it’s just stunning. “[T]here appears to be no statistical connection between improved health outcomes and pandemic policies that” shut down the country and put 40 million out of work. In other words, shutting down and putting 40 million out of work and on unemployment and causing all this massive stimulus spending had no connection to improving anybody’s health.

It had no connection to keeping people from getting the disease. It had no connection to preventing people from dying from the disease. It was totally unnecessary, 100% unnecessary. That’s statistical data. And then if you… Let me find a quick statistic here, depending on where I put it? Getting… (muttering) Here it is. Try this. On top of all that, only 1.8% of U.S. residents live in nursing homes or assisted-living facilities.

Just 1.8% of the population live in nursing homes or assisted living facilities. Yet these facilities have tallied 42% of all COVID-19 deaths — and we shut down for that? It’s 1.8% of the population lives in nursing homes or assisted living, yet these facilities had 42% of all COVID-19 deaths — and most of those are in New York, New Jersey, and Minnesota.

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RUSH: Let me get back here to the subject at hand. I’ve got a series of stories here in the Stack of Stuff that are really aimed as demonstrating how pretty much everything we’ve been told here from beginning of this has not been true. Some of you sly dogs out there, you’ve sent me emails. “Do you realize when you say this, you’re including Trump? You’re saying Trump lied…”

No, I’m not including Trump in it. I mean, I guess I could, but I think Trump was lied to, too, by people he wanted to believe. He was lied to by people he wanted to respect. He was lied to by people he wanted to respect him. Look, I know the person Donald Trump better than some of his close friends know him. I just do. Do not doubt me on this.

I know the president’s psychology. I know his… Not as a trained psychologist. I’m just telling you: I know the guy. I know what motivates him. I know what makes him happy. I know the kind of things that he would hope to have had. He didn’t want any of this! He fully expected… I’m not making it up.

He fully expected that a month after he was inaugurated, that all this stuff would go by the wayside and the country would unify. His experience in New York has been universal love. They loved him when he was on The Apprentice. They loved him when he was operating his casinos in Atlantic City. They loved him when he was the back page, front page, New York Post, Page Six.

They loved him constantly. He got used to it. Now, not everybody in Manhattan. There’s still some rivalries and so forth. But he didn’t want any of this. The amazing thing is… You talk about adaptation? Once it started — once this vitriol, once this hatred, once he realized what they were trying to do to him — he did not change to try to make them go away.

He did not change and bend to their will in order to make it go away. He stood up and took the fight to them. But this, in one sense, is one of the major disappointments of his life, this whole hoax, the coup. It’s not a badge of honor. I don’t care what anybody says, it’s not a badge of honor. It ticks you off. But it informed him. It alerted him to what he was up against and who he was up against and it prepared him for doing battle with them.

And he still is taking it to them. And I, for one, am grateful that he does. I’m grateful that he has not succumbed to it. Most people would have by now. Donald Trump didn’t even need any of this. Donald Trump had what many people would consider the ideal life. He didn’t need to do any of this — meaning run for president, meaning any of this grief. He didn’t need it.

His life could have been perfectly fine and enjoyable without any of this. But he did it. And then when the excrement show started, he hung in there and he is still hanging in there. But, yeah, they continue lying to him. They lied to him about the virus. They lied to about 2.2 million people might die. And it was only because the people he was talking to are the creme de la creme in American health care, in American disease, in American medicine.

And he also wanted to believe they were on his side. Despite what he’s seen from the FBI, despite what he’s seen from Comey, despite what he’s seen from Mueller — despite all that — in this instance, he still wanted to believe that people were on his side and were willing to work with him, because of the nature of this virus and disease and the potential problem.

But it didn’t take him long to figure out what their really objective was. Their really objective was to get the country shut down, get the economy stopped, keep it shut down as long as possible so that the negative impact on him would be insurmountable. He would not be able to win reelection in November. Once he figured that out… I know many of you are saying, “He should have known it from the get-go.”

Maybe. I’m not gonna comment on it. Remember, Trump — even after all of this — is not instinctively political, meaning he’s not instinctively ideological. He still looks at all of these Democrats and he does not see liberalism first. He sees it at some point as he’s assessing them. But he sees them as the opposition. He sees them as Democrats. He sees them as fake news or liars or what have you.

Now, let’s get into some of the data here. This is John Solomon’s website, Just the News. Headline: “CDC: Coronavirus Fatality Rate Could Be as Low as 0.26% — New estimates released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention indicate that COVID-19 may have an infection fatality rate as low as 0.26%, a number that is double the seasonal flu,” which is 0.13%. But that 0.26% is “significantly lower than” what they were telling us at the outset of this.

They had it at 6%; they had it at 3%; they had it at 9%. It was all over the place! The world’s economies… It’s the way to look at this. The world’s economies were shut down for a virus that is double the fatality rate of the seasonal flu — and we don’t shut down anything for the flu, and we never have. We don’t take precautions to protect hospitals. We don’t do diddly-squat every flu season.

For healthy people, people with no preexisting conditions, COVID-19 is essentially the flu. “Experts,” quote-unquote, were spectacularly wrong. Politics. Politics, not health. Politics, not medicine. Politics — computer models that have never been right — drove America’s economy into the ground, and it was an excuse to destroy Donald Trump’s presidency. Destroy Donald Trump.

The coronavirus was gonna finish what the Obama deep state started. What Robert Mueller couldn’t finish, what Adam Schiff couldn’t finish, the virus was going to finish. Even today, a handful of blue state governors continue to fearmonger — and I’m just gonna tell you: If the economy doesn’t bounce back strong, the blame is gonna land squarely on Democrats.

Because they are the ones who are doing everything they can to convince people that we shouldn’t be opening up, lockdown should not end. Despite the facts, despite the science of the virus, they continue the charade that the general population is as much as risk as the nursing homes they packed with COVID-19 patients, and it isn’t. Now, that number, 0.26%, let’s look at this a different way, a different story.

This Jacob Sullum at Reason magazine. It’s a Libertarian publication. Headline: “The CDC’s New ‘Best Estimate’ Implies a COVID-19 Infection Fatality Rate Below 0.3% — That rate is much lower than the numbers used in the horrifying projections that shaped the government response to” this. If this number had been used from the get-go, we wouldn’t have shut down, not to the extent that we did.

A longer-than-two-week shutdown was never necessary.

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RUSH: Okay. Just to review. We blew up the economy. We robbed 25%-plus of the people in this country of their jobs. We shut down their jobs. We shut down their businesses — some of them, sadly, maybe permanently. We have printed/borrowed enough money to put our children and grandchildren into even deeper debt.

We’ve installed a pandemic of fear that causes many people to walk around with worthless masks and avoid being civil to each other, likely for years. It’s amazing to me we were able to do all of this destructive damage in two months. In two months, we were able… You look at it one way: In two months, we were able to unravel over 250 years of the country’s existence, all for something that kills almost exclusively the very old who already have existing serious health issues.

We’ve done all of this in a country where 99.7% (it’s even more) do not die. We’ve done all of this! It’s just stunning, and the last thing it is, is adult-level thinking. You know what it’s done? You know, people talk about what they’re afraid of, what scares them. Remember some people saying, “I’m afraid, you know, people ain’t gonna want to go back to work, Rush.

“I’m afraid they’re gonna get comfortable out there getting these checks that come in every two weeks.” Well, what this has done, among other things, is it has exposed the sheep among us. It has exposed the people among us who prefer assumed security from an all-powerful, authoritative government from the liberty-loving people among us.

The liberty-loving people among us want no part and wanted no part of any of this and have been pushing back against it for quite a while now. Other people have just acted like sheep, done whatever the authoritarians told them to do. But the scary thing is that so many people in this country would willingly give up the authority in their lives to a command-and-control bunch of politicians.

It either does or does not speak highly of our educational system, and it certainly doesn’t say much for how we’ve been teaching liberty and freedom. It certainly doesn’t say much about how we’ve been teaching the Constitution, if it’s this easy — and we have, you know, quite a difficult job getting people back oriented toward fending for themselves. We have to do it, though.

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RUSH: Now, look at this. I don’t know if you’ve heard about this or not. The NFL says that they are planning on having full stadiums in September, even in August for the preseason. This is from a league official at the NFL. It’s a Fox News story. Now, I think this is the kind of thing that is needed. I would call this courage. People need to see, people need to experience normal. Lockdowns and shutdowns are not normal.

There is no way that any aspect of shutdown or lockdown should become normal in any way, like wearing masks for the rest of our lives and this country. It’s so unnecessary. The mask is simply a symbol of fear anyway, that’s now in the Democrat Party arsenal. Baseball teams, football teams, leagues can play a leading role, I think, in recovering from all of this. Folks, I’m just gonna tell you: I think this whole shutdown, lockdown has been one of the biggest mistakes in modern history.

Now, I’m not gonna start pointing fingers of blame anywhere. There’s enough to go around. But it was a political objective that the Democrat Party and the… Look, the administrative state, the deep state — whatever you want to call that faction of elites in Washington and the European Union — you’ll note how they were able to coordinate this around the world. It should give you an idea of just how advanced globalism is. I’m sure these people that did this were stunned at how easy it was.

We need to get young, healthy people outside, doing what they were born to do — the sooner, the better. Now, it’ll trigger. Look, I’m not naive here. If the NFL starts playing to full stadiums and baseball does the same, it’s gonna trigger a new round of social media hysteria. But I am so fed up with social media governing things too. A bunch of anonymous nabobs that we don’t even know get to sit in for public opinion. When did this happen?

You know, the media uses social media — Twitter, primarily — as a stand-in for going out and finding out what people actually think. Social media has replaced public opinion, and they go find whatever social media they want because there is insanity throughout social media. They can pick and choose whatever they want to illustrate their point, and then we end up being governed by it. So let social media go hysterical.

It’s no different than the politically correct crowd or the environmentalist wackos getting hysterical and trying to determine, influence behavior. Look, there’s no avoiding it. The politics of fear can be overcome, and sports can play a central role in it. So can pictures of people at pool parties. Look, if we don’t have a deadly outbreak two weeks from now, people are gonna see their fear is misplaced — and I’m sure we’re gonna have stories of an outbreak somewhere.

You better just get ready for it. But the bottom line is: “The NFL is planning for the best-case scenario when the season returns this fall and, according to one league official, this includes packed stadiums,” not 25% full, not 10% full, “packed stadiums.”

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RUSH: Say, have you heard about COVID-19 in the U.K., and their search for a vaccine and their trial over there? There is such a decline in coronavirus cases in the U.K. that Oxford University doctors who are working on a coronavirus vaccine are worried that their vaccine can’t be tested because there are not enough people infected with the virus in the general population. You know, because the people given the vaccine or a placebo need to be exposed to people with it. Have you heard about this?

(interruption) Well, it’s out there. It’s a U.K. Telegraph story. I’ll guarantee you the Drive-By Media here is gonna do their best to keep this one from you, or at least reshape it/redesign it. But the COVID-19 vaccine trial, which is being done in conjunction with Oxford University may fail because the transmission of COVID-19 from person to person in the population isn’t enough. Not enough people — new people — are getting the virus. There is a 50% chance that the trial may give no result. Holy smokes, doesn’t sound like a second wave to me, does it?