RUSH: Headline: “Experts, Trump’s Advisers Doubt White House’s 240,000 Coronavirus Death Estimate.” Well, that’s all fine and dandy, but look what we’ve now based everything on! So they put out this number from their models. It starts at 2.2 million, and that was never gonna be an active number because that was based on if we did nothing.

That number should never be mentioned. But it will continue to be mentioned as the high mark because it will be able to then be used to say, “See how great a job we did. It wasn’t 2.2 million. It was” whatever the death toll ends up being. Then they scared us with a hundred thousand to 200,000 deaths, and then 240,000. Uh-oh!

“Leading disease forecasters whose research the White House used to conclude that a 100,000 to 240,000 people will die nationwide from the coronavirus were mystified when they saw the administration’s projection this week.” Why! (laughing) The administration’s simply relying on this modeling data. So why were the modelers, why were the disease forecasters “mystified” when they saw the administration use the number?

“The experts said they don’t challenge the number’s validity, but they don’t know how the White House arrived at them.” Do you see what’s happening here, folks? They give the administration these numbers from the models, the administration uses them, and now the modelers come back and say: What’s the White House doing? We don’t think these numbers are…”

(ear-splitting tone)

Ah, I’m glad there’s a break right now.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Now with a full segment ahead of me, let me spend some time on this Washington Post story. It’s one of two today, in the Washington Post and TheHill.com. “Experts and Trump’s Advisers Doubt White House’s 240,000 Coronavirus Deaths Estimate.” The 240,000 number is from the models! Donald Trump didn’t make it up out of whole cloth. Neither did anybody in the administration make up 240,000. They were given that number from the modelers.

Now we got some of the modelers and some of the health professionals saying, “Well, the Chinese were not honest with us about how contagious the disease was. They didn’t tell us it could be spread from person to person” What? Are we this helpless that we can’t do anything without knowing what the Chinese tell us about this? I’m gonna be using a heap big amount of discipline here, folks, as I go through this.

Because there is a big part of me (and a growing part of me) that says much of what we’re doing — not all, but much of what we’re doing — is, I don’t want to say not necessary. But the damage that we are purposely inflicting on the people of this country is ripping me apart. It is the people who make this country work, and we have turned off their livelihoods, and we have told them they cannot do what they want to do when it comes to their careers and to their work.

Work is how people define their self-worth in many cases. Work is how people measure themselves. We have turned the switch on a $22 trillion economy, and now we get a headline, “Experts and Trump’s Advisers Doubt White House’s 240,000 Coronavirus Deaths Estimate — Leading disease forecasters, whose research the White House used to conclude 100,000 to 240,000 people will die nationwide from the coronavirus, were mystified when they saw the administration’s projection…”

How the hell could they be mystified!

They gave the White House the numbers; so the White House used them. How could they be mystified? “The experts said they don’t challenge the numbers’ validity but that they don’t know how the White House arrived at them.” What! The experts who supply the information are telling the Washington Post they don’t know how the White House got the numbers?

Why is this not the screaming headline all over the news today, along with the success that chloroquine is having out there? (More on that as the program unfolds.) “White House officials have refused to explain how they generated the figure,” 240,000, “a death toll bigger than the United States suffered in the Vietnam War or the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

“They have not provided the underlying data so others can assess its reliability or provided long-term strategies to lower that death count.” Am I watching the same briefings that the Drive-By Media is reporting on here? It seems to me that it’s Dr. Fauci and Dr. Birx that are using these numbers, and they’ve got their charts and their graphs and they’re showing the steep climb on the upside of the hill and the downside of the hill and then the (what do they call it) leveling off or whatever it is.

“Some of President Trump’s top advisers have expressed doubts about the estimate, according to three White House officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.” So this story is attempting to blame Trump for using inflated numbers, and you know what they’re gonna say. They’re gonna say, “Trump got everybody all hepped up when he knew it wasn’t gonna be this bad so he can make himself look good when the number comes in much lower.”

Well, hell’s bells, that’s what every bureaucrat in the world does, and that’s what they’ve been setting themselves up for here. It wasn’t… I remember when Trump first came out and used the 2.2 million number. He was stunned; he was shocked. He didn’t make it up! He was given that number by his health experts as the number of deaths if we didn’t do anything.

No social distancing.

No shutting down the economy.

Keeping restaurants open.

All that sort of stuff. That’s how many people would have died. We’re not not doing nothing. We’re doing all kinds of stuff. The 2.2 million number’s irrelevant now so it ought not ever be used again. But there it is. “At a task force meeting this week, according to two officials with direct knowledge of it, Anthony S. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told others there are too many variables at play in the pandemic to make the models reliable…”

What!

We have spent the whole week being told what the models say we gotta rely on ’em, and now Fauci’s out saying: Well, there’s so much input going in there, there’s so much output coming out of there and “there are too many variables at play in the pandemic to make the models reliable.” So all these numbers are worthless now? What does this mean? Dr. Fauci said, “I’ve looked at all the models. I’ve spent a lot of time on the models. They don’t tell you anything. You can’t really rely upon models.”

What!

Relying on models is all we’ve done!

Relying on models is why we’ve shut down the economy!

What the hell is going on?

Relying on models is why you can’t go to work. Relying on models is why you’re under some sort of penalty if they catch you outside your house. From the very beginning of this week, I called attention to the problem with these models. They’re just as bad and just as unreliable as climate change models. Nobody knows. So they want to put data into a model, come out with a number, and then use that.

And now all of a sudden Trump’s using the numbers indiscriminately and randomly? “Robert Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the vice president’s office have similarly voiced doubts about the projections’ accuracy…” Well, they were used in connection with yesterday! What is this? They were using these numbers, 240,000 to 200,000. They were using these numbers yesterday.

Here’s this story saying everybody doubts them? I have to be missing something here. I have to have somehow lost consciousness for five or six hours yesterday, last night. I have to be missing something, ’cause none of this is making any sense. “Jeffrey Shaman, a Columbia University epidemiologist whose models were cited by the White House, said his own work on the pandemic doesn’t go far enough into the future to make predictions akin to the White House fatality forecast.”

The White House fatality forecast? This is the Fauci-Birx fatality forecast! Trump is using numbers he’s been given. Trump is not the health expert here. He’s not the scientist. He’s not running the models. He’s not looking at the output for the models and running out there to the briefing room and telling us what they are. He’s being given the data, correct? So now all these modelers are running away from their work.

“Jeffrey Shaman, a Columbia University epidemiologist … said his own work on the pandemic doesn’t go far enough … ‘We don’t have a sense of what’s going on in the here and now, and we don’t know what people will do in the future,’ he said. ‘We don’t know if the virus is seasonal, as well.'” What! Fauci does. Fauci’s telling us it’s seasonal. Fauci says there’s gonna be a seasonal rebound, but this guy’s saying his models don’t know that.

Well, make your models know it! Put the data in! That’s how models work. Models are not magic. You know models are just a lazy man’s effort to not have to think on your own. Get this! Get this next paragraph. “The estimate appeared to be a rushed affair…” We’re talking here about this estimate of a hundred thousand deaths to 240,000.

People are making tracks now to disavow these numbers in the Washington Post, the Bezos Post. So here’s another paragraph: “The estimate appeared to be a rushed affair, said Marc Lipsitch, a leading epidemiologist and director of Harvard University’s Center for Communicable Disease Dynamics. ‘They contacted us, I think, on a Tuesday a week ago, and asked for answers and feedback by Thursday, basically 24 hours,’ he said.

“‘My initial response was we can’t do it that fast. But we ended up providing them some numbers responding to very specific scenarios.’ Other experts noted that the White House didn’t even explain the time period the death estimate supposedly captures — just the coming few months…”

That’s a valid point. Hundred thousand dead, 240,000 dead when? By when? They keep telling us that the peak is in the next two weeks in some states, the next three weeks in some states, the next four weeks in other states. When is this total of 240,000 supposed to be reached? Well, I damn well guarantee you that most people watching the news think in two weeks. They think we’re gonna go from 6,500 deaths right now to 240,000 deaths because this is what they’re being told, and this is what they’re being told to keep ’em at home, and this is what they’re being told to make ’em go along with shutting down the economy. They think 240,000 people are gonna be dead in two weeks.

Now these people are running away from this. “Almost the entirety of what the public knows about the death projection was presented on a single slide at a briefing Tuesday from the White House coronavirus task force. A White House representative said the task force has not publicly released the models it drew from out of respect for the confidentiality of the modelers.”

Bingo. Bring ’em up on that stage. Let us meet them and let their work be shown and questioned. Instead, Fauci and Birx represent the work, Trump goes out there, takes the lead ’cause he’s the president. That’s what he does. He trusts the stuff that he’s being told. “A White House representative said the task force has not publicly released the models it drew from out of respect for the confidentiality of the modelers,” and, get this, “many of whom approached the White House unsolicited and simply want to continue their work without publicity.”

Whoa. Without publicity? You mean to tell me that a bunch of random computer modelers who have been trying to get hold of the White House to infuse their work into the task force and don’t want to be known? What are you nodding your head at? What does that mean to you, Mr. Snerdley? They don’t want to be known. That goes so against human nature. Something like this, everybody wants to be part of it. Something like this, everybody wants to be on that stage. Something like this, everybody wants to be seen to be part of the solution.

If somebody comes along and wants to input work into this but doesn’t want to be known, you ought to be very suspicious of the work. This is not normal to want to remain anonymous when you think you are presenting solutions.

“A representative for Fauci did not respond to a request for comment. A spokeswoman for Vice President Pence declined to comment. On a Thursday call with conservative leaders, Pence said it was ‘difficult’ to view the models but ‘the president thought it was important to share with the American people.'”

That’s just one story. There’s another one from — and this story goes on. There’s a story, TheHill.com: “Trump Officials Privately Question White House Coronavirus…” See, this story is about how the White House is questioning the data they’ve been given. But even so, the data has been used to keep you home, to shut down a $22 trillion economy with no end in sight.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Now, in the midst of the information and data I just passed on to you, we get a headline like this yesterday from Politico. Quote: “How Fauci and Birx got Trump to Listen to Science.” Politico celebrating how the brilliant people got this idiot Trump to finally listen to the science, and yet we’ve got a story today saying that these people have nothing to do with the numbers, that Trump used the numbers, that the White House is using the numbers, and nobody knows how the White House arrived at the numbers. It was Birx and Fauci that gave Trump these numbers and these invisible modelers and yet we’ve got a Politico headline: “How Fauci and Birx got Trump to Listen to Science.”

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Now, this headline has finally shown up on Drudge. “Experts and Trump Advisers Doubt the 240,000 Deaths Estimate from the White House.” From the White House? How about from the modelers! How about from the health professionals, folks, who gave us these numbers!

JOHNNY DONOVAN: And now, from sunny South Florida, it’s Open Line Friday!

RUSH: Damn it. Give me Tiger King! I’m just kidding. Greetings. Welcome back. Open Line Friday. Rush Limbaugh, having more fun than a human being should be allowed to have because I’m doing what I was born to do. I’m still lucky enough to be able to do it, and I wish everybody could. This is tearing me apart!

This is literally tearing me apart, what we are doing to our country, what is happening to you. You are the people that make the country work. You’re on the front lines, and many of you are now in essential businesses and having to go to work in the food supply chain, in the medical equipment supply chain, pharmacists, people that run grocery stores and keep them stocked. (sigh) And it’s a thankless gig at this point.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: “Trump Officials Privately Question White House Coronavirus Death Toll Estimate.” I think the media may be setting the table to try to deny Donald Trump credit for lower fatalities than the models are predicting.

That’s what I think this is all about. The media has been hyping huge death tolls. They’re how… Remember during the first Gulf War, all these body bags U.S. military was gonna needed because the U.S. military had no way to beat Saddam Hussein. (sniveling) “We don’t know desert warfare! We’re gonna die. Body bags, hundreds of thousands!” Sam Donaldson was excited.

The media today is all excited about a hundred thousand body bags being ordered. The media is excited about huge death tolls, projections. A hundred thousand to 240,000 deaths were announced. “Trump looks scared!” Now the story is, “Trump Officials Privately Question the Death Toll Estimate.” Well, the death toll estimate comes from Fauci and Birx and whoever they’re getting their modeling data from.