RUSH: Ladies and gentlemen, here’s the headline: “As U.S. Grapples with Virus, Florida Hits Record Case Increase.” Oh, yeah, the Democrats and the Drive-By Media are keeping up the “panicdemic.” You’ve seen it. Record number of cases of all time, of any time, in one day, on Sunday, in Florida. What’s the number, 15,299.

Now, I want to share with you a tweet from the former New York Times reporter Alex Berenson. You know who this guy is. Alex Berenson is former New York Times. They have no desire to have him working for them anymore because he’s one of these guys that just instinctively violates conventional wisdom. He stays outside it. He doesn’t conform to it.

That still amazes me that so many people in the media want to sound exactly like everybody else. Whatever happened to individuality? Whatever happened to staking your own claim on smart and aware and thoughtful ideas? Why does everybody want to sound the same? You know the answer? ‘Cause that’s what it takes to move the agenda forward. You replace the individual with the collective and you move the agenda forward. But in order to do that everybody has to sacrifice their own individuality and conform to whatever is demanded by the leaders.

Well, Berenson’s not one of those guys. He’s been doing research and tweeting on the virus and on all the numbers related to the virus. And he tweeted yesterday, the same day that this record number of cases came out in Florida, quote, “And after a week of nightmare headlines about Florida and about 70,000 new cases,” which really is nothing more than positive tests… And, by the way, that is an important distinction, folks.

When you see these numbers, like 15,299, what do you think happened to create the number? Do you think 15,000 people crawled into a hospital somewhere barely alive, begging for treatment, and that the hospitals tabulated the number of people that showed up and the grand total on Sunday — and, by the way, this number came out before noon yesterday. So the day wasn’t even over and they were touting the record.

But do you think that’s how it happens? Put your hands up if you do. I can see telepathically. Literally how do you think these numbers are arrived at? Sick people barely able to crawl, barely able to walk, some of them not even able to drive showing up at the hospital somewhere throughout the state asking for their lives to be saved? That’s not how it happens.

This is the result of positive tests, for the most part. There are people showing up, but it’s not the entirety of the number. This is the result of improved or increased testing and positive results. But it doesn’t even tell us how many of this number are symptomatic or asymptomatic. But, anyway, back to Alex Berenson’s tweet.

“And after a week of nightmare headlines about Florida, and about 70,000 new cases (aka positive tests), hospitals have a grand total of 130 more patients.”

What? Wait. Are you telling me that 15,299, a record number of cases in one day anywhere at any time, yesterday in Florida has resulted in a grand total of 130 new patients? That’s less than two and a half percent of the number. Less than two and a half percent of the number of new cases are in the hospital, statewide, intensive care unit beds.

There were 45 deaths in Florida on Sunday in a state with 20 million people, and we are now rocking and rolling on this panicdemic. It is exactly as I have been warning everybody. These new cases, record number of new cases, and notice that they are being reported in states that Trump needs to win, and they are being reported as though the number of cases is essentially deaths. This is what they want you to conclude.

Nobody is telling you how many of the 15,299 are in the hospital. Nobody’s telling you how many of the 15,299 are symptomatic. Nobody’s telling you how many of the 15,299 even know. And they’re not telling you how they get the number. But the vast majority of it is from positive tests.

In hard-hit Houston, two top Democrat officials have called for Houston to lock back down as area hospitals strain to accommodate the onslaught of sick patients. In Florida, where parts of Walt Disney World reopened on Saturday, 15,299 people tested positive, a total of 269,811 cases, and 45 — oh, they did report, 45 deaths, according to the State Department of health stats reported on Sunday. California had the previous record of daily positive tests. That was 11,694 set last Wednesday. So 45 deaths in a state of 20 million people.

My friends, as it goes, one death is too many, but we’re talking about death statistics here that come in way under the flu or automobile accidents or any number of things. All this stuff is being used to try to persuade you that it would be a disaster to send your kids back to school. And I’ll tell you, I just want to remind you. We said once the Democrats started pushing for massive testing, the intended purpose is to use the increase in positive results from increased testing to push the country toward locking down again.

And they’re doing that to stifle the economy and any kind of recovery that might occur ’cause it’s all about one thing. Everything is about one thing. It is what it is. One of my all-time favorite philosophies. It’s undeniable. It is what it is. It isn’t about anything else. And it’s about getting rid of Trump. And it’s about convincing the 63 to 65 million people who voted for him not to do it again.

That’s all all of this is about, getting rid of Trump. Massive numbers of new cases, you’re supposed to think, “Oh, my God. That number of people are gonna die someday, how many of ’em did die already?” Forty-five, 45 people died as the state of Florida reported. If they advocate for locking the whole economy down again, what does that do? How does extending the lockdown do anything but put off the inevitable?

As we learned from the first lockdown, it doesn’t stop anything. Flattens the curve, supposedly spares the hospital system from being overrun, but we found even that wasn’t a problem in most cases other than in New York. So, once again, there’s evidence thanks to people like Alex Berenson out there that it isn’t — I’m not gonna say it’s not bad. It’s not how you are being led to believe. It’s not what you are being led to believe.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Roger, Bakersfield, California. Here we go. Great to have you on the program, sir. Hello.

CALLER: Hi. How are you? I’m concerned about the statistics on this coronavirus. I keep listening to conservative shows, and they tell the total number of cases that they discovered and the number of death cases, but the one thing you never hear about is the recovery cases.

And I would assume that should be deducted from the total amount of cases, because everybody keeps thinking the total amount of cases is how many cases are really out there. I think if you deduct the recoveries, you’re not gonna have nearly as much of a threat and the libs aren’t gonna be able to scare you nearly as bad with a smaller amount of numbers.

RUSH: This is an excellent point. The Johns Hopkins website does tabulate recoveries, they’re just never reported. I’ll check the John Hopkins website. It’s a very good point because the number of recoveries, subtract that from the total number of cases, and then you have a more accurate number. And you’re right, they never have touted recoveries.

CALLER: Exactly. And not even on my local stations they don’t.

RUSH: No. They never do. Excellent, excellent point. You know, in the outset, they didn’t tabulate hospitalizations, either. You couldn’t find that number, because it was always low. It was always low compared to what you would think it would be with the panic associated with the reporting of new cases every week, day, or however often it was. So your point clearly is that even in the reporting of these numbers there’s a political agenda and there’s some news they’re trying to hide or keep from everybody.

CALLER: Exactly. Exactly.

RUSH: I’ll find out what that recovery number is, because, as I say, the John Hopkins website — I haven’t checked that website literally in months, but when it was new — and it’s still said to be the gold standard for accurate data, we’ll find out what the recovery numbers there are.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Well, darn it, you know what I forgot? I forgot to go to the Johns Hopkins website. I’ve got a stand-in, but I’ve still gotta go to the Johns Hopkins website. I just forgot it. I got up outta here, I went up here to do some stuff in the kitchen, I came back, it totally slipped my mind. But I have something that will get close to it.

Worldometer is another website that’s tracking all of this, but their numbers are kind of screwy in the sense that they’re not reporting total numbers of cases, but for what they are reporting, it’s a great, great indication nevertheless.

Worldometer says the number of U.S. recoveries is 1,519,201. I’m gonna try to make that simpler by getting rid of a bunch of numbers. One and a half million recoveries out of 1.7 million hospitalizations. So that’s a pretty high number of recoveries.

Now, it wouldn’t be if they’re counting all cases, which worldwide is 3,000,440. But we’re concerned about United States. And I’m not the best guy with numbers, either, even when I’ve got a calculator, but I’m figuring that these numbers, we’ve got 1,500,000, a million and a half recoveries, and 1.7 million hospitalizations. That means the recovery rate’s 85%.

That’s nothing to sneeze at. So I think that one of the reasons that the recoveries are not being reported is specifically that. Now, somebody’s telling me that Johns Hopkins doesn’t break down the recoveries except state by state. Well, that’s new, because back in the early days when China was leading the world in the number of cases, the recoveries were total.

Now, I don’t know why that has stopped. I’ll check the website myself in the next break. I’ve got it sitting there. It’s just my bad, folks. Just forgot to do it. I should have made myself a little handwritten note here to do it.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Seventy-five hundred nursing home patients died in New York thanks to the policies of Governor Cuomo. And yet Jennifer Rubin says that’s what competent government can do when New York reports zero deaths for the first time.

Okay, I went to the Johns Hopkins website, and they still are only reporting recoveries by state. So we’d have to go state by state and add up all the recoveries to get the total.

But let me give you some random numbers. New York. There have been 32,000 deaths — I’m rounding up — 32,000 deaths; 71,000 recoveries. So essentially over twice as much recoveries as deaths. In New Jersey, 15,000 deaths and 31,000 recoveries. In Massachusetts — this is profound — 8,000 deaths; 94,000 recoveries. I’ll tell you that again. Massachusetts, 8,000 deaths; 94,000 recoveries. I’m rounding up to make the numbers simple.

Well, some of the recovery numbers I need to widen the website out to get the number to display. Let’s look at Michigan. Michigan, 6,000 deaths; 53,000 recoveries. You see the trend here. The recoveries in these states are massively higher than the number of deaths. And yet our previous caller’s right. Not a single report on the number of recoveries. And when reporting the number of cases, they’re trying to make people think that that number is actually a death toll or will be at some point.

Here’s Steve in Traverse City, Michigan. I’m glad you waited, sir. Great to have you on the program. Hello.

CALLER: Ah, yes. One name we want to see on the recovery list, Rush, and that’s you. Mega prayers.

RUSH: Thank you, sir, very much.

CALLER: Hey, on the COVID with all the news right now and the libs going crazy about how many new cases there are and their focus is on people between 20 and 40 and most of them are asymptomatic, you gotta remember that up until just a couple weeks ago you were not allowed to get tested unless you were showing symptoms. Now that we have the wider-spread testing in place, of course we’re gonna uncover more people who are asymptomatic.

RUSH: That’s true. In fact, I have a note here from somebody, and I’m reluctant to use this because it’s just anecdotal. But a group of 12 went to get tested, and one of them tested positive, and the testers then said, okay, all the rest of you are positive, too, without testing them, just counted them. So one person out of 12 was confirmed as positive and they just added the other 11 since they were in the group.

The point being that with corruption at so many levels, institutionally in this country, why would we expect there to be no taint or no corruption in the reporting of numbers related to coronavirus when we know that the total reporting on this story has a political objective? We know that it does.

The political objective in the reporting of the coronavirus, death numbers, case numbers, whatever, is get rid of Donald Trump by essentially blaming him for all of this. The unemployment rate, the gross domestic product, whatever the bad numbers are, blame ’em on Trump, including deaths and number of cases. So with the media involved, how can there not be corruption here?

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Betsy, Cape Cod. It’s great to have you with us on the EIB Network. Hello.

CALLER: Hi. How are you?

RUSH: Well, I’m just fine, Betsy. How are things on Cape Cod?

CALLER: Oh, good. Crowded. I’ve lived on the Cape for 33 years. I listen to you every day. I just have two quick comments. One was your comment about Cuomo being extremely conservative about New York City, you gotta look at it this way. Now their virus percentage is way down versus Trump wanted everybody to open up and now look at Florida, where thankfully my ex-husband lives, the coronavirus is like 19,000 —

RUSH: Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Thankfully your ex-husband lives in Florida? Does this mean you wish him ill?

CALLER: Well, I’m happily remarried. No, I don’t wish him — (laughing) —

RUSH: I caught you there. I caught you there, Betsy. You think I would be sidetracked because — you think I bashed Cuomo. I didn’t bash Cuomo. The reason Cuomo’s death figures are down to zero is ’cause he’s already killed everybody.

CALLER: Now, the advantage to Cape Cod because we have so many New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut people that have second homes here.

RUSH: Yeah.

CALLER: Luckily we’ve kept it down quasiminimum. I’m an independent, so I’m not Republican or Democrat.

RUSH: That easy, yeah.

CALLER: My beef with Trump is he was pushing to open up all the states, and look what’s happened to Florida, Arizona. Both of my sons are on the West Coast. One of my kids is an MD specializing in pediatric oncology —

RUSH: We had to reopen, Betsy, or we were gonna literally destroy and lose the country. We had to reopen. And we cannot lock back down. I explained this. If you were here at the beginning of the program, I explained and put in perspective the reports on the number of cases and how that’s arrived at and how they’re not reporting the number of deaths and they’re not reporting the number of hospitalizations. It’s not nearly as bad as they want you to think.

And they’re trying to transfer all these cases as imminent deaths or eventual deaths, and they’re trying to blame Donald Trump for this because all of this, Betsy, is about getting rid of Trump either before or on November 3rd. You’ve got a bunch of states that are in economic misery right now because their governors still won’t reopen ’em, and that’s because they’re trying to have a negative impact on the nationwide economy so that they can destroy Trump.

If I was a Democrat, the thing that would bother me, seriously, is that my elected officials are literally trying to destroy the country in order to get rid of somebody they can’t beat any other way. And literally destroy the country is not an exaggeration. The economy. Not to mention endorsing Black Lives Matter and this whole business of transforming America to something it was never intended to be.

What does keeping locked down change? It doesn’t change a thing. If we go back and lock down again we’re just delaying the inevitable while we inflict further damage on the U.S. economy, which is exactly what the Democrat Party is hoping for.