Due to the coronavirus pandemic, a substantial portion of our nation and economy has essentially been shut down.
In many parts of the country, gatherings of 10 people or more are prohibited, all major events are canceled, countless businesses have been forced to closed and tens of millions of American citizens are being ordered to remain in their homes for an indeterminate length of time, often under threat of arrest and fines or prosecution.
Of course, while all of this is being done to mitigate the spread of COVID-19 and reduce the final death toll of the infectious disease, it increasingly appears as though this “cure” could prove more damaging and deadly than the illness itself, particularly in terms of the incalculable economic and psychological damage being wrought on the country.
That was the recurring theme throughout conservative talk radio host Rush Limbaugh’s program on Tuesday, which he touched on right off the bat and repeatedly circled back to over the course of the day.
“I have an overriding sense of foreboding here, folks. I’m really in a dilemma as to how much of what I really think do I share with you,” Limbaugh said to start his show, according to a transcript on RushLimbaugh.com. “Some of it I can’t. I’d be run out of this studio if I were to tell you some of what I think. And I’m talking about in terms of what needs to be done, not the circumstance that we’re in, but the solution, because the overriding sense of foreboding I have is that this cannot go on.”
“This just can’t go on. We cannot go on like this for months. We are going to destroy the country or the economy, however you want to look at it,” he continued. “The favorite word of millennials is ‘sustainable.’ Well, this isn’t sustainable. And we, as a society, down the road are going to be faced with some really, really serious questions that we cannot avoid. The longer we go, the more unavoidable answering some of these questions is.”
Limbaugh spent a moment discussing what a potential “recovery” might look like once people began to return to work — if they still had a job waiting for them — and whether that recovery would be rapid or more of a slow build-up back to where our nation once was just about a month ago.
In Limbaugh’s view, everything is contingent upon the development of a safe vaccine, which likely won’t occur for another 12-18 months, or at least an effective “pharmaceutical cocktail” of drugs to treat those who became infected.
Widespread testing of the population for the virus, while helpful, wouldn’t be sufficient to support a reopening of the nation’s economy, since there could easily be a resurgence of the virus that brings about another lockdown once people resumed their normal activities.
“So you have the medical reality and then you have the economic reality. This can’t go on. I mean, how many people want to see the United States economy destroyed? I doubt very many,” Limbaugh said.
“But then what is gonna be required to prevent that from happening? People going back to work. It’s gonna be things reopening without a vaccine. What’s that expose people to? It’s a serious, serious question.”
He then noted how the predictive models of total cases, deaths and death rates continue to be revised downward, and cast a critical eye toward the media for not placing any focus on the number of people who’ve recovered from the disease.
“The number of recoveries has never been a singular item reported here, and then there is the undeniable fact that there are forces in the American culture who want you to continue to think the worst of this, and they want you to blame President Trump for it,” he said. “They want you to think it isn’t getting better, that it won’t get better because of Donald Trump.”
Limbaugh also spent some time talking about the coronavirus situation in his particular area, Palm Beach County in Florida, and how, in the grand scheme of things, the numbers of sick and dead in that county were relatively low, certainly in comparison to a place like New York City.
“Total cases in Palm Beach County: 514,” he said. “Total deaths: 11. Hospitalizations (the number of people who are hospitalized with coronavirus): 57. Does that strike you as a large number?”
“So much of what happens during crises like this … So much of this has been politicized, folks, that it’s just impossible anymore to actually find factual truth,” Limbaugh lamented.
Later on in the program, he took some calls from listeners who shared their concerns about how governors and mayors were sharply cracking down on the citizens in their jurisdictions with unconstitutional lockdown orders.
As for the liberal pundits and elected officials who seemed to trust and side with the Chinese Communist Party, which has tried to cover up the virus, Limbaugh said, “Most people tell me they think the American left is the worldwide Communist Party now and that they are willingly subverting this economy and destroying it for the purposes of eliminating and wiping out capitalism.”
“Whether that’s the design or not, that is happening. This economy is being shut down. That’s why this is not sustainable,” he added.
“Are we just gonna sit by and watch $22 trillion …? That’s the value. That’s the sum total of the GDP. That’s the U.S. economy. Are we gonna sit by here and watch it evaporate? ‘Cause that’s what we’re doing under the guise of not losing any unnecessary life, meaning we want to try to save as many lives as we can.”
Limbaugh raised a number of valid points. And he is certainly not alone in his concerns over whether the prescribed “cure” for coronavirus — a virtually complete lockdown of our capitalistic society — is actually doing worse damage than the virus itself would ever be capable of on its own.
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