Limbaugh was not just providing a set of data points. His meaning was implicit and I was disputing it.
I provided it as a set of data points. You can choose to take it as you wish.
Added on edit.
But instead of implying anything lets got to the tape so to speak and you can read it for yourself.
Limbaugh:
CALLER: Even kind of something with my father, who passed away — and he passed away in 2009. It’s something we did together. And I’ve been a longtime Rush listener, first-time caller. And this is just an amazing moment for me.
RUSH: Well, thank you, sir, it’s really, really great to have you here.
CALLER: In high school I used to be made fun of because at lunch I’d go out to my car and listen to you instead of sitting with everybody else. So — (laughing) But I found the situation with the kids on the beach pretty mind-boggling with the media, left or right, where they were chastising these kids on the beach down in Florida. I don’t remember if you remember that ’cause you were down so hard.
RUSH: Well, no, no, no. I’ve seen it since. There was a — look. The town website where I live is chiding people for being on the beach, for standing too close together while their dogs are pooping. I mean, you wouldn’t believe it. I’ve seen it all.
CALLER: Well, you know, I find it really ironic that, you know, this virus, it attacks the Boomer generation, right? That’s the most susceptible generation to this virus. And everyone gets on their soapbox and preaches about these kids on the beach out there partying, throwing morals to the wind, getting drunk. But yet the generation that’s complaining the most about it is the generation that was in Woodstock, out there having sex in the open, doing drugs, you know, this is a generation that, you know, gave us abortion on demand, threw our morals to the wind, stuck our kids in day cares, you know, spit on returning soldiers, dodged the draft, but now they expect us, the younger generation, to fall right in line —
RUSH: Well, you know, that’s right. In a sense you have a point. Some of the Boomers have become old men yelling at kids to get off their yards. But you’re talking about the spring breakers, yeah, and I know the boomers that were doing everything they were doing in the sixties with the free love and the love-ins in San Francisco and all this stuff and the drugs now getting all upset about things, but they think they’re entitled.
But the boomer generation, I’m a Boomer, and much of the Boomer generation embarrasses me. Not the part of it I identify with, but a bunch of freeloaders. They never had life tough. So they had to invent their traumas to tell themselves that life was tough. And they made life tough for themselves by inventing all these different traumas. But, you know, you mention something. I’ve got some stats here that I want to share with you. You triggered something here, and you’ll hear it as I go through this. Thank you, Jacob, for the call.
I have here from a source called worldometers.info or if you’re in Rio Linda, world-o-meters.info. Worldwide deaths, January 1st through March 25th of this year. Are you ready? Worldwide deaths from January 1st to March 25th, 2020, 21,000 deaths coronavirus. And that’s the low number. The lowest number of deaths, January 1st, March 25th, coronavirus. Now keep that number, 21,000 coronavirus deaths, and counting. We have to say “and counting.” Now, 113,000 deaths by seasonal flu, 228,000 deaths by malaria. Around the world, worldwide, worldwide. Not America. Worldwide.
Let me start again. I know numbers are hard to follow on radio. I do it better than most because I am patient. This is January 1st through March 25th. So basically three months.
Coronavirus, 21,000 deaths.
Seasonal flu, 113,000.
Malaria, 228,000.
Suicide, 249,000.
Traffic fatalities, 313, almost 314,000 deaths.
HIV/AIDS, 391,000 deaths.
Alcohol related deaths, 581,000.
Smoking-related deaths, 1,162,000.
Cancer deaths, 1,909,000 deaths.
Deaths attributed to starvation, 2,382,000 deaths.
And death by abortion, 9,900,000.
In the first three months of this year, January 1 through March 25th.
I’m not trying to make any correlation. I’m not I’m trying to say, “Hey, we’re overreacting to coronavirus death.” I’m just giving you the stats here. You can react to these stats however you wish: 21,000 coronavirus; 113,000 flu; 228,000 malaria; 250,000 suicide; 313,000 traffic; 390,000 AIDS; 581,000 booze; 1,162,000 smoking; two million cancer; 2,300,000 hunger; 9,900,000 abortion.
Throw the abortion numbers out. I’m not trying to be provocative here. I mean, you can’t. But throw ’em out, you still have some really shocking numbers. Because we don’t talk about it. We got suicide hotlines. We try to teach people to drive safely. We do whatever we do with HIV/AIDS. We tell people to drink responsibly, tell people not to smoke, try to devise cancer treatments, we try to feed people.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Here’s Roland in Houston. Roland, you’re next. It’s great to have you on the EIB Network. Hi.
CALLER: Dittos. Thank God that you’re here behind the golden mic to bring us back to ground earth. Two quick points. First, on your theory or your wonder as to why California’s numbers are so low, relative to New York, I believe the difference is the mass transit. You have five plus million a day in New York versus a couple hundred thousand at best in California.
Second point, and most importantly, addressing your concern about everyone’s lack of understanding of what’s gonna be the result of all of this chaos and your uncertainty concern as well. I believe if Trump took the position that going forward we should be obligated to tell the states, tell the media, tell everyone including the CDC to report the flu effects every year when it comes to deaths. And we have zero impact on the economy despite all of these absolutely related deaths taking place. I’d appreciate your opinion. Thanks.
RUSH: Well, I was one of the early, shall we say, leaders in informing people of the Swine flu back in 2009 and 2010. Those numbers are astounding. Let me see if I can — I don’t have ’em in front of me. There were 80,000 deaths, 300,000 infections, and there’s some millions in here too. The Swine flu was devastating. It dwarfs what’s happening here. And we didn’t shut down anything. In fact, Obama was credited for brilliantly handling the crisis. And it was used, Swine flu numbers were used to tout and promote Obamacare.
So I used the numbers, and I throw them out, and the reaction I got is, “Rush, you can’t compare the flu to this. This isn’t the flu. A, it’s worse than the flu. The flu, we’ve got vaccines — and because we’ve got vaccines, the country has become accustomed and accepting of the annual number of deaths from it because we’ve got prevention methods.
“We’ve got flu shots. We’ve handled the mutations of the flu. But when it comes to coronavirus, we have not one thing to defend ourselves against it.” Here are the numbers for Swine flu, 2009-2010: 61 million infected, 300,000 hospitalized, over 12,000 dead. It was more than 12,000 dead. But regardless: 61 million infected, 300,000 hospitalized, and nobody gave it a second thought in 2009-2010.
You probably don’t even remember it, and what I was told was, “You can’t compare ’em, Rush. The flu is not this. We’ve got medicines for the flu. We’ve got preventions for the flu. We’ve got vaccines. So, as a society, we have accepted that there will be a number of deaths and hospitalizations because we have ways to fight it.
“And the flu kills specific groups — you know, elderly people, people with pre-existing conditions — that makes ’em susceptible to it. But this, we have not one defense to it except staying home,” and so, they say, “You can’t compare it.” Well, okay. I’ll accept that. Then we’re not gonna have a vaccine until a year from September. Therefore, we’re not gonna have a coronavirus shot until a year from September.
I don’t know when we’re gonna have medicines for it. We supposedly do now. In fact, I can’t remember the name of it, but I was reading earlier today that there’s an erectile dysfunction drug that is being shown to be effective. They’ve tried it. There’s a clinical trial of an erectile dysfunction drug, and they’re in a trial.
Half the people in the trial are getting the drug, half are getting a placebo. They’re studying it and so forth. It’s been shown to be effective. But this is months and months and months away, as all the other trials are. Now, we’ve got chloroquine and the Z-Pak, and I would really… It’s being used, and I would really like to know what the success rate is in various places where it’s being tried.
But we’re not being told, and I don’t know why. And I don’t want to speculate as to why. Even the president yesterday has changed his tune. He said, “This isn’t the flu. It’s worse than the flu, and we can’t compare it to the flu,” and in a way, that’s true. We accept 50,000 traffic deaths a year. We accept cancer deaths. We accept suicides. We accept ’em.
Well, we haven’t accepted. We have accommodated.
We don’t stop. We don’t shut down the country every time somebody commits suicide. We don’t stop the country when somebody gets the flu or gets hospitalized with or dies from it. And it’s because we’ve just accepted it. It’s a part of life, and there are prevention methods, and there are things you can do to help people not succumb to those things
. With this, there’s nothing yet, and so that’s the big — shall we say — difference or equalizer.
We’ve got nothing to tell people to do other than hibernate.
