Rush Limbaugh
In less than five months, conservative radio presenter Rush Limbaugh has gone from haughtily dismissing the coronavirus as nothing more threatening than the “common cold” to scolding Americans for failing to adapt to the raging pandemic in the manner of the strong pioneers of the Donner Party, who infamously only survived a deadly winter crossing of the Rocky Mountains restoring cannibalism.
The Presidential Medal of Freedom winner made this last horrible analogy during his radio show Tuesday, with national deaths from the Covid-19 outbreak exceeding 136,000 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University. But on February 24, the same day that the WHO Director-General warned that Covid-19 had “pandemic potential,” and almost a month after the organization declared a “global health emergency” due to severe nature. of the virus, Limbaugh was graceful. ruling out the risks of the outbreak for your listeners.
“I want to tell you the truth about the coronavirus,” Limbaugh intoned. “Coronavirus is the common cold, folks. The media hype about this thing, as pandemic as the Andromeda strain as ‘Oh my gosh, if you get it, you’re dead!’ You know what? I think the survival rate is 98%.
“It is probably a ChiCom lab experiment that is in the process of being put together,” he added, fueling a completely unfounded conspiracy theory that Covid-19 was created in a lab. “It is really promoting itself as a kind of deadly pandemic of Andromeda Strain disease,” he added, before launching a mock hysterical voice: “‘My God, it’s going to end the nation! It’s going to end the population of the world! “”
“Two percent of people who get the coronavirus die, that’s less than the flu, folks!” Limbaugh falsely claimed that Covid-19 has death rates that are, in fact, many multiples of the typical flu, according to an analysis published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not trying to let your guard down. No one wants to get any of this. I hate having the common cold. You don’t want to catch the flu, it’s miserable. But we are not talking about something that will end your town or your city if it finds its way there. “
Limbaugh then turned to suggest the outbreak was a manufactured crisis fueled by sensational press corps. “This is a classic illustration of how media coverage, even if this media coverage is not stacked, even if this is the way the media normally does things. This is an exaggerated and panicked version, exactly how the media deals with these things to create audience, interest, readers, clicks, what you have. “
But five months, and 580,000 global deaths later, Limbaugh was setting a different tone, warning listeners on Tuesday to stand up and accept that the fatal risks of the coronavirus are now just part of the everyday American landscape. Calling the country “cowardly and fearful and almost giving up on this enemy, Covid-19,” Limbaugh called many people’s response to the virus “non-American.”
“This is making people victims, making them feel like they are not to blame, they can stop living, they may have to accomplish or even try difficult things,” Limbaugh said of the coronavirus, “because there is a deadly thing there. outside that could kill them. This is not who we are. “
Instead, he said that Americans should overcome the “convenient excuse” for the now-seemingly very real threat of the outbreak and urged them to simply adjust to life with the virus. “Like the Donner party,” he said moments later, making a strange historical analogy. “A group of travelers trying to reach California through the Sierra Nevada mountain range. They made the mistake of trying to make the trip in the dead of winter. We are taking over the Lake Tahoe region. They reached the top, it was so bad that they had to resort to cannibalism to survive. That is what stands out from the Donner Party. If you read the newspapers, written by the leaders of the Donner Party, the only reference to the cold it was is a phrase: “It was a particularly hard winter.” It’s just what it was. They did not complain, because they could not do anything. They had to adapt. “
“That is what is lacking,” said Limbaugh, who relates the indescribable horror of eating other human beings to survive to accept greater risks compared to what, in his estimation, was simply a “common cold” in February. “There seems to be no concept of adaptation. There seems to be no understanding in the Millennium generation that we can adapt to this and that we are going to have to. ”
Clips up via The Rush Limbaugh Show.
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