Talk-radio host Rush Limbaugh on Monday said new data suggests the lockdowns may have been unnecessary because the coronavirus infection rates were far higher than previously reported, meaning it was not nearly as much a threat to life as feared.
But orders from Democratic governors are going to stay – or even get worse – because of politics, he told his listeners.
“Folks, I’m gonna tell you, I told you when I first got back here after being out for two weeks that the first thing when I was doing a discussion of the models, the big debate whenever this is over is was it necessary? And the more information that we gather, it is beginning to look like it was not necessary to shut down this economy,” he said.
“And, furthermore, that it is certainly not necessary to keep it shut down. But these Democrat governors are hell-bent on keeping it shut down. I’ll guarantee you they’re on orders from on high. This is part of the presidential campaign, for this economy to become as weak as they can make it, for more and more people to lose their jobs, that’s how they think they’re finally gonna get Trump. This is their effort to do what Mueller failed to do, what Adam Schiff failed to do, what the Kavanaugh attacks failed to do, what Stormy Daniels failed to do and what Michael Avenatti failed to do. They’re salivating over this.”
He pointed out that the Associated Press is reporting: “A flood of new research suggests that far more people have had the coronavirus without any symptoms, fueling hope that it will turn out to be much less lethal than originally feared.”
Limbaugh quoted a professor at Harvard’s School of Public Health, Dr. Michael Mina, who said, “We have just been off the mark by huge, huge numbers” estimating total infections.
An analysis by a Stanford researcher concluded the fatality rate for the coronavirus appeared to be 0.1% at the high and 0.02% at the low end.
“That would be like a normal or bad flu year. One to two per thousand dying in the population,” Limbaugh noted. “Remember, when we started, the models here that everybody swore by which gave us the lockdown policy were predicting four to one dying per hundred — per hundred, not thousand.”
The Stanford study, he said, estimated the number of infected was 50 to 85 times more than the number of confirmed cases.
“If this is true, it means the death rate is way down, that the mortality rate for COVID-19 is so low that it may even be lower than the flu every year,” he said.
Limbaugh noted other studies were reporting similar results.
He said the lockdowns were imposed because the World Health Organization was promoting the idea that it was a highly virulent disease.
“Folks, this is such a mess. It was so. … I’m in the crowd (and it’s a growing number of people) who don’t believe that the severity of this lockdown was necessary. Nationwide, everywhere, it just wasn’t necessary, and it just pains me. It just it depresses me, it pains me to see how easily and quickly we just erased — we just eliminated — three years of unprecedented economic growth in this country,” he said.
So why were all the restrictions imposed?
“I’m the guy that’s been warning everybody about who the Democrats are and the modern-day leftists, but I swear, I don’t know how much more I can take of a political party and its governors actually attempting to extend this damage, to prolong the harm that is occurring to average, ordinary people. It is amazing to watch this,” he said.
He said the Democrats’ position was illustrated by Miami Herald columnist Fabiola Santiago, who, as WND reported Monday, said people packed on beaches “should work nicely to thin the ranks of” Trump fans.
“She’s hoping that crowded beaches lead to more people getting COVID-19 and dying, and she’s assuming most of the people going to the beaches are gonna be Trump supporters and DeSantis supporters. So let’s just hope they spread the disease and die!” Limbaugh said.
“This is who they are,” he said. “See, she will never be called a hatemonger. She will never, ever be thought of as anything as other than compassionate and thoughtful and caring because she’s a liberal Democrat and a member of the media. This is just unadulterated hate. Now, she might say, ‘I’m just joking.’ Yeah, well, we don’t get to joke about things like this. We don’t get to joke about you people dying. If that happens, they come after us.”
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