RUSH: I need to get this call up here right now. Dean in Chicago has an excellent question. Dean, are you ready, are you prepped, ready to go on the on air?

CALLER: I am, Rush.

RUSH: Tell us what your question or comment is because I’ve got something that’s gonna dovetail with this, something Governor Cuomo said. What’s your question?

CALLER: The question is, what is the goal of this policy? Is the policy to minimize the number of deaths, or is it to prevent everybody from not getting sick? If it’s the former, you would isolate the vulnerable populations, which are the elderly, particularly in nursing homes and those that have comorbidities, such as diabetes or obesity.

RUSH: Right.

CALLER: If the goal is to prevent anybody from getting sick, which is ridiculous, you do what you’re doing now, which is lock everybody up in their house.

RUSH: Well, the answer to your question may be the latter. It may be they’re trying to prevent everybody from getting sick because they think that means everybody’s gonna die. And the reason I say this and the reason I wanted to take your phone call, I have a quote from the “I’m governor and you’re not” press conference of Governor Cuomo yesterday. And the reporter said to him (paraphrasing), “There are protesters outside right now, they’re honking their horns and they’re raising signs. These are regular people, they’re not gonna get paychecks, some of them are not getting their unemployment paycheck. And they’re saying that they don’t have time to wait for all of this testing and they need to get back to work in order to feed their families.”

It’s a female reporter yelling at Governor Cuomo. She said their savings are running out, they don’t have another week. They’re not getting answers. So the point is the cure can’t be worse than the illness. And Governor Cuomo said the illness is death. What is worse than death? And there he answered your question, Dean. And the fact is, the illness is not death. Ninety-eight percent of the people who get the disease recover from it. It isn’t death. Your question is right, it does seem like they’re trying to prevent everybody from even getting sick.

CALLER: And the problem with that, Rush, is that you’re not gonna be able to do that even with social isolation. They had that in California, the Santa Clara and the Los Angeles County studies have shown that this thing is widely — i

RUSH: Yeah, but there’s people trying to disprove — those two surveys are now being and impugned and — I agree with them, don’t misunderstand. I think they’re right on the money, but there are people out there trying to destroy them because they don’t fit the political agenda that is attached here to maintaining the shutdown.

CALLER: You can’t do that. First of all, you’re not even gonna be able to stop the virus if you do this shutdown continuously. The only way to stop a virus is to have herd immunity. The best policy would be to isolate the groups that are most vulnerable, particularly to death, obviously, and the rest of them let people mix, let people get sick, let ’em recover, they’ve got herd immunity, life goes on. That’s the way it has to be.

RUSH: That’s what Sweden decided to. That’s what Sweden’s doing, and they’re having what they think is success with it. And they’ve got the same population as Michigan. They’ve got a smaller death rate than Michigan has.

CALLER: I mean, it’s kind of like — you and I are approximately the same age. In fact, we’re almost the same age. And remember when we were kids, they’d have chicken pox parties because chicken pox was so wildly infective that better to have everybody get it, get over it, and then move on. And that’s the way you’ve gotta think about this. It’s not fatal to people that are in relatively good health and don’t have any underlying —

RUSH: Okay. Let me play devil’s advocate. So let’s say I’m a believer in the shutdown and you say that. Well, your way, Dean, is gonna get our hospitals flooded. Your way is gonna get hospitals flooded with all kinds of sick people that we’re not gonna be able to handle.

CALLER: I don’t think that’s correct. I think the initial shutdown was done because we didn’t have the data as to who’s gonna get sick. And I understand it. I understand the president, somebody comes in to his office and says, you know, two million people are gonna be dead, he’s gotta take some action. Well, now you have the data, get rid of the models. You now have the data. And the data is that the overwhelming majority of the people — and you’re talking like 95% of the people that are hospitalized in New York or in any other hot spot are elderly people that have underlying conditions or they’re morbidly obese or they have diabetes. This is the data that we have.

RUSH: I know. The age is like 74 to 79, the median – the average age in New York is high. So you’re right about that.

CALLER: I’m telling you, this is gonna be a disaster. And the president needs a counterweight or a couple of counterweights to Drs. Fauci and Brix, particularly Fauci. He need to listen to other people that are immunologists and infectious disease specialists, but he needs to get — Fauci has to be cross-examined on this stuff because we don’t know where we’re going.

RUSH: Yeah, we do. See, we do know. We know where a specific political entity wants to take us. This was my point yesterday. They have told us for four years what they’ve been — three years. They have lied through their teeth about any number of things in an effort to reverse the election results of 2016. And then, failing that, they’ve tried to get rid of Trump every which way, and this is just them hoping that this virus will do what Robert Mueller and Adam Schiff failed to do.

This is why it makes no sense to believe anything these people are saying after four years or three years of evidence that they have lied through their teeth about everything they’ve told us. They didn’t just all of a sudden wake up and start telling us the truth just because this is a serious virus. And the reason I wanted your question, are they trying to stop people from dying or getting sick?

Because it clearly appears, if you listen to Fauci, if you listen to any of these medical people, you’re right, it seems like their objective is to shield people from getting the virus so that they do not get sick. There’s no amount of sequestering, there’s no amount of sheltering in place that is gonna accomplish that. What, do you pick a date, August 1st, okay, beaten the virus? No. Not until something’s done about the virus, not in terms of a vaccine or what have you.

CALLER: I think the other problem you’re gonna have, Rush, is that by following this policy you’re gonna guarantee a second wave. I don’t know the magnitude of the second wave, but you will guarantee you a second wave. People need to the bet out, mix, get the disease, for most of them it will be mild symptoms as the vice president said earlier in your show or no symptoms at all, then they acquire immunity and life goes on. The problem the president has is this is lake freight train. This is like a 500 car freight train that you’ve ground to a halt in a very short time. You’re not gonna be able to crank this baby up as quickly as the president hopes, at least I don’t think so.

RUSH: Well, yeah, because the people that are gonna make that happen don’t have any money right now.

CALLER: Correct.

RUSH: I mean, okay, you open the movies, go with what? You open the restaurants, go with what? It’s going to take a while, people have to go work and start earning money. How many of those jobs are gonna be available right off the bat? By the way, we’re talking with Dean in Chicago, who is not anybody famous, he’s just a caller. But he had a great question. I’m not trying to pad your ego. But this is really the best way I’ve heard of putting this in perspective. The objective: Are we trying to keep people from dying or just keep them from getting sick? And it’s obvious. Now, they would tell us, no, we’re trying to save the people, limit the death rate. But they’re doing that assuming this thing kills everybody. They’re doing that by trying to shield anybody and everybody from getting the virus. And as you say that simply isn’t possible.

CALLER: And I think that the last point would be that the death rate is probably going to fall much below — it’s gonna fall below the flu, is my estimation, given what you’ve seen in these preliminary studies on Santa Clara County.

RUSH: Let tell you, when this is all over, whenever it is, the debate is gonna be was any of this necessary? You mark my words. That’s what this debate is going to be. The Democrats don’t care. As long as this elects a Democrat in November, that’s their objective with this.

CALLER: One last thing, I think it’s important for people to feel confident. And I think the president has to do whatever he can to get the therapeutic studies completed as quickly as possible so that people know that even if you acquire this and even if you get like bad flu symptoms or whatever you’ve got a therapeutic you can take whether it be hydroxychloroquine or rendesovir or whatever —

RUSH: Whatever it is. I mean, they’re giving nicotine patches to some people now claiming that smokers, of all people, are the least likely to get the disease.

CALLER: That’s a real anomaly.

RUSH: Well, no, I can actually give you some actual evidence on that, anecdotal. I’ll do that in just a minute. The one thing, you say the president needs to do this, do that. Jim Cramer — I don’t know if you heard the sound bite in the first hour — CNBC, Mad Money guy, he says Fauci is destroying these briefings every day. Whatever hope happens to be conveyed before Fauci stands up, Fauci destroys it.

CALLER: Well, Fauci’s become the center of attention. I mean, it’s like he’s the defacto president of the United States. I mean this is insane. This is what goes back to my point before. The president never had any come in and cross-examine Fauci on his proposals. Some infectious disease expert who will take a look at these and cross-examine him and his model makers as far as what they’re proposing and the impact of this and why is this going to be effective. They did these models with no data at all, no profiles of any population.

RUSH: I actually think it’s worse than that. I think it’s worse than that they’re not bringing anybody in to cross-examine or to challenge Fauci. I think the way I know how Washington works, you get this guy Fauci, he’s loved and adored and respected by the media, which is what every freaking Republican dreams of. And so there might be, “Hey, I agree with Dr. Fauci, I’m with Dr. Fauci, I love being with Tony, I like the doctor.” It might well about that there are some people attempting to achieve what they can’t on their own by sidling up to Dr. Fauci.

Fauci has achieved the status that everybody in Washington wants. He’s thought to be apolitical. He’s thought to not have a care about politics. Fauci is not assumed to have a political interest at all. He is thought to be totally and strictly and exclusively devoted to the health of the American people. And therefore, since he’s apolitical and since he doesn’t have any political inclinations, doesn’t even appear to have a political identity, you can’t criticize him.

CALLER: Well, that’s what I was thinking about. The problem that the president has is that Dr. Fauci is almost like his one man adviser. I would not say to get rid of Dr. H. He’s obviously very knowledgeable and he brings a particular perspective. What you do with Dr. Fauci is that I think you have to dilute his influence. You have to bring in other people who are equally as knowledgeable but have different perspectives on this thing and then you use the data that’s now available and is continuing to come in to decide which course of action to follow.

RUSH: All right. Let me play devil’s advocate with you, Dean. Let’s say the president were to do that, the president would find somebody that would question or maybe have a different take on or openly challenge Dr. Fauci and his assertions, either privately or publicly, and when the press learns of that, you know what the story’s gonna be. “Trump throws Fauci overboard, attempts to humiliate him in front of White House press corps.” That’s what every Republican knows is gonna happen, if they go against anybody chosen and protected by the Drive-By Media.

CALLER: Well, I would never have this kind of debate in public. I mean, this is for the benefit of the president. The president makes policy. But it’s important that the president hear other perspectives —

RUSH: Somebody’s gonna tell Maggie Haberman, is the point, if it happens.

CALLER: Well, then, you know, the president can simply come out and say, I want to get the perspectives of everybody. I need to get the best advice from a significant number of people so that I can synthesize the information and set the policy for the country. He’s not doing that now. That’s the problem.

RUSH: You know, this can’t go on. And at some point, at some point somebody’s gotta figure this out. They’ve got this 100-member get America Moving Again blue ribbon task force, people like Tim Cook are on it, Mark Cuban, the owner of the Mavericks. Isn’t it about time these people show up at a briefing and give us a report on how they’re doing and what their plans are? We know pretty much the ventilator story now. Isn’t it time for these people to show up and tell us what their work to date has produced in terms of getting the country open again?

CALLER: I agree. I think that the art and the skill of politics, Rush, is never to put people in a desperate position. And we’re rapidly heading to that for large numbers of people in this country —

RUSH: Twenty-six million and counting.

CALLER: Exactly. I mean, this is horrific. This is absolutely horrific.

RUSH: Oh, it’s inhumane and it’s unsustainable. We’re doing it to ourselves. That’s what breaks my heart about this. At any rate, Dean, I’m glad you called. I really appreciate you giving us so much — Dean, are you still there? Did he hang up?

CALLER: I’m still here.

RUSH: Dean, are you a subscriber to my website?

CALLER: I am not.

RUSH: Well, you are now. I’m gonna comp you a subscription to RushLimbaugh.com, the app. This just means you’re gonna have a complimentary user name and password to access all of the stuff out there.

CALLER: Thank you very much, Rush.

RUSH: It’s my pleasure. I’m glad you gave us so much time. I have a piece here – (interruption) No, Cuomo said it. He’s talking to an infobabe and she’s describing to him all the people out there protesting, not getting a paycheck, not getting their unemployment deposit, they don’t have any money. And that they don’t have time to wait for all of this testing that the government keeps talking about. And Governor Cuomo said — well, her question, I gotta get the actual question. They’re not getting answers, governor.

So the point is the cure can’t be worse than the illness itself. And he said the illness is death. He said I’m Governor Cuomo and you’re not. The illness is death. What is worse than death? The illness is not death. But clearly he thinks that it is. So his objective, obviously he’s doing whatever he can to make sure people don’t get sick. That, folks, is so unrealistic. We are never, ever going to keep people from getting sick, period. Pick your disease. We’re never gonna be able to pull that off anyway.