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Remember the Swine Flu Panic of 2009? No, You Don’t
Rush Limbaugh.com ^ | March 12, 2020 | Rush Limbaugh.com

Posted on 03/12/2020 1:25:48 PM PDT by Kaslin

RUSH: I’m always interested in people’s reaction to this program. I think I have a lot of empathy, and I think one of the reasons why the relationship you and I have is good is ’cause I know how you hear this show. That, I think, is a key ingredient. It’s called empathy. I know how you hear it.

So when I check emails and get questions from people, usually I’m not surprised, and I’m not surprised that I got beaucoup number of questions: “Rush, you don’t sound panicked over any of this. The last two days, you don’t sound panicked, and yet everybody’s panicked. I’m panicked,” people say in their email. “I’m scared to death. I mean, I’ve looked, the stock market was pulling up to 30,000. Now it’s down to 21,000. The Democrat Party, every move they’re making is designed to grow government, make government bigger, and you don’t seem alarmed.”

Folks, panic is… I don’t know. I’m not panicked. I am ticked off like you cannot believe, and I am really having a conversation with myself about how far to go in explaining why I’m mad, ’cause I’m mad about the politics of this. For example, let me give you some statistics. How many of you even remember the swine flu 2009, 2010? I don’t remember it. I mean, I remember we had it. But I don’t remember any panic about it. I don’t remember a thing about the swine flu.

I went back and looked at the stats and I was stunned. Are you ready for this? The swine flu outbreak in this country in 2009 and 2010, 60 million Americans were infected. Do you remember that? Sixty million were infected. Dr. Siegel, one of the Fox doctors was on TV explaining this last night. He was not my primary source for it, but he ended up confirming it. Sixty million people were infected.

Do you know how many people were hospitalized in 2009-2010 with the swine flu? Three hundred thousand were hospitalized. So 60 million people infected, 300,000 hospitalized. And nobody even remembers it. And why? Well, because we had a different president. We had a Democrat president by the name of Barack Obama, and the news then was how wonderfully well Obama was handling it, how expertly well Obama was dealing with it.

There wasn’t any media panic. The Republican Party did not politicize it at all. They made not one single effort that anybody can find or remember to try to make political hay out of it. It was treated as a health issue from top to bottom. Sixty million Americans infected, 300,000 hospitalized. I don’t know what the death toll was. The numbers with the coronavirus are not even close. They are barely a fraction of a percentage compared to the swine flu.

And then we also had Ebola. And I do remember a little bit more about Ebola, and once again, the Drive-By Media was praising the skills and the composure and the brilliance of Barack Obama in dealing with it. And I remember being kind of ticked off about that because there wasn’t anything anybody can do about Ebola. Ebola is like any of these other viruses. There’s nothing we can do to contain them.

See, the reason I’m not panicked is I don’t have enough emotion left for panic ’cause I’m too mad. I’m too ticked off at this. We’re watching the U.S. economy be wrecked here. There’s some people enjoying it. And it makes me mad. There’s some people’s lives here that are being seriously damaged over this. And you know what’s gonna happen? It’s gonna end. We are going to overcome it. It’s going to fizzle out like all of these do.

How did we ever survive 60 million infected with the swine flu? But we did to the point that hardly anybody remembers it. And that’s just 10 years ago, 300,000 hospitalized. So we overcame it. We overcame Ebola. This is gonna end, it’s gonna pass. And I’ll tell you what else is gonna happen. Because of the actions President Trump has taken, like this travel ban from Europe, that has really put the Democrats in a dicey position.

There’s some real positives if you want to find ’em here, and I, of course, have, and I’ll share them with you in a minute. The point is we’re gonna rebound from this, and when we do, you had better get ready and hold on tight, because this market’s gonna rebound. The people who are selling right now and getting out of it are panicking, and they don’t want to be selling. Everybody’s doing this from a very defensive posture and point of view.

And it’s adding… Like we get news that Tom Hanks and his wife have coronavirus. “Oh, no, it’s all going (mewling)! It’s over. Oh, my…” And then his kid — his kid, Chet — goes on TV, tries to calm everybody. “They’re fine. They’re in Australia. They’re fine. They’re not suffering at all. Everything’s fine!” It doesn’t matter. They’ve got it.

Anyway, this is gonna end, and this market is gonna rebound like you can’t believe because the people who have been selling off want to get back in it. And we are taking economic procedures right now that are going to serve to further reignite the economy when all this passes. And when we get back into the growth trajectory, some of the proposals the president’s making regarding payroll taxes, Small Business Administration loans, even a tax holiday?

You just wait until people have no more emotion left to be panicked and get tired of this and want to go a different direction. And that day is gonna happen. The day’s gonna come where people are gonna wake and say, “I’m tired of living this way. I’m fed up with being panicked every day. I’m fed up,” and then — because of the actions the president’s taken — we’re not gonna have that many brand-new infections.

By shutting off this travel from Europe… As I said, this has really put the Democrats in a bad position ’cause they love the European Union. They love it, and the very fact that travel from their beloved European Union has been shut down… But let… If they come out and oppose this, then they’re essentially coming out for open borders. This is actually… If you want to look at it politically, it’s a good move from that standpoint.

But I’m not panicking ’cause I’m too mad about this.

This is… I don’t know. (sigh) It’s… I know some of you are saying, “Rush, easy for you to say.” It isn’t easy for me to say, folks. Nobody’s immune from what’s happening here. I mean, you go back and you look at these swine flu numbers and you ask, “What was different? (chuckles) What was different was we had a Democrat in the White House and so the media didn’t want to be critical of the government.

The media wanted to be promoting him. They wanted to be positive. They wanted to promote the brilliance of Barack Obama, the brilliant management skills, the temperament, the crease in his slacks, the intelligence and all that. Now we’ve got just exact opposite.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Meanwhile, don’t forget, ’cause I’m sure everybody has, swine flu outbreak 2009, 2010, right here, United States of America, 60 million Americans infected. Do you remember any talk about running out of hospital beds? Were we gonna run out of IV saline solution? Were we gonna run out of masks? Sixty million Americans infected with the swine flu. Think pigs running everywhere if you have to, however you have to visualize this, 300,000 hospitalized.

We’re nowhere near 300,000 hospitalized with coronavirus. I mean, we’re not even close to it. In fact, worldwide we don’t even have 300,000 cases, worldwide, of the coronavirus. Three hundred thousand hospitalized in the United States alone. You don’t even remember it. You know why? Because Barack Obama was president, and he was God, and we couldn’t be critical. We had to build him up and promote him like nothing else we’ve ever seen before.

The media wasn’t critical at all. The media was praising the efforts of the government to deal with swine flu. The one difference is the freaking media. And you don’t even remember something 10 times as worse as what is happening now. There weren’t any travel bans.

Hell, you know what? You could still get barbecue wherever you wanted it. Kansas City, Missouri, didn’t shut down because of the swine flu. It’s a big barbecue town. All because the media and the Democrats were interested in making Obama look good and of course the Republicans back then didn’t politicize it. It was a health issue.

So if you’ve got kids, if you’ve got people panicked and worried, “Oh, my God. What do I do?” just give ’em the numbers. Swine flu 2009, 2010: 60 million Americans infected, 300,000 hospitalized. And you don’t even remember it. And I guarantee you nine out of 10 people you tell this to, “I don’t remember that.” Exactly. Ask ’em why they don’t remember it. “Well, I don’t know.” Yeah, you don’t remember it for one reason. Nobody made any big news about it. “Well, why not?” Well, answer that yourself. Say, “Who was president then?”

“Uh, I don’t know, Millard Fillmore?” No, Barack Obama.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Try this. February 12th, 2010, archives, Reuters news: “Swine Flu Has Killed Up to 17,000 in U.S.” February 12th, 2010: “H1N1 Swine Flu Has Killed as Much as 17,000 Americans Including 1,800 Children – The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported on Friday the swine flu pandemic put as many people in the hospital as during the normal influenza season, but most were younger adults and children instead of the elderly.”


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Editorial
KEYWORDS: barackhussein0bama; communityspread; coronavirus; disease; flu; h1n1; media; mediabias; obama; rush; rushtranscript; swineflu; talkradio; transcript; trump; unfreepress; usatestingfail; worstpresidentever
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1 posted on 03/12/2020 1:25:48 PM PDT by Kaslin
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To: Kaslin

Excellent segment by Rush.


2 posted on 03/12/2020 1:29:15 PM PDT by conservative98
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To: Kaslin

Just talking about this yesterday in another thread; I remember the Swine Flu panic 0f 1976. People were just as panicked over getting inoculated against it as they were the flu itself, due to side effects.

https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/12/1/05-1007_article

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kUtYDyqLjpo


3 posted on 03/12/2020 1:30:58 PM PDT by LouieFisk
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To: Kaslin

Precisely why I dug up this thread from 2009
Over 8000+ posts and a lot of doom and gloom.

H1N1 flu victim collapsed on way to hospital [Latest H1N1 updates downthread]
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2278371/posts


4 posted on 03/12/2020 1:32:05 PM PDT by dfwgator (Endut! Hoch Hech!)
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To: Kaslin

Bottom line: don’t commit hari kari just yet. You might live to regret it when things get better.


5 posted on 03/12/2020 1:34:23 PM PDT by Mr Ramsbotham ("God is a spirit, and man His means of walking on the earth.")
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To: Kaslin

Sure I do.....and they lined people up...and lined people up....and no one REALLY knows if it did a bit of good.


6 posted on 03/12/2020 1:42:38 PM PDT by Sacajaweau
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To: dfwgator

We didn’t all die? I’m shocked.


7 posted on 03/12/2020 1:44:54 PM PDT by McGruff
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To: Kaslin; All
Keep this in mind however:

Spring '09: Swine flu hits

Summer '09: Cases diminish

Fall '09: Swine flu worse than the Spring

So whatever happens...it'll likely get better...then likely worse...then MUCH better!

8 posted on 03/12/2020 1:51:13 PM PDT by Colofornian
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To: LouieFisk

I don’t remember any panic.. Swine Flu 1976..


9 posted on 03/12/2020 1:58:30 PM PDT by tallyhoe
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To: Kaslin

I remember it like yesterday because I caught it. I hadn’t had the flu since about 1975 and that H1N1 (or Hini as I called it) hit me hard. I was down flat for 10 days and fevers hitting 104 and 105; I saw bats coming out of cracks in the ceiling and walls and thought to myself, “My gosh, I know this is an hallucination but those bats sure look real.” So, I’m not looking forward to catching C-19.

We live in a tiny town near Nowheres Ville, and my husband drove miles to the nearest LittleBigger Town to stock up on groceries we can’t find in our town. We do this every month, so it was our regular trip. He said there was not a roll of toilet paper in the store, not even in the camping section. When he got home we realized he’d forgotten a couple of items, to he went to our little, local market. They had toilet paper displayed all over the store with the regular price displayed.

Maybe country folks know something?


10 posted on 03/12/2020 2:02:53 PM PDT by CH3CN
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To: tallyhoe

“I don’t remember any panic.. Swine Flu 1976..”

Was a contributing factor in Ford’s loss to Carter that same year, esp the problems with the inoculation program. The Nixon pardon didn’t help him a whole lot either.


11 posted on 03/12/2020 2:03:42 PM PDT by LouieFisk
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Remember all those timed you wore a seatbelt and nothing happened? No, you don’t.


12 posted on 03/12/2020 2:05:30 PM PDT by proust (Justice delayed is injustice.)
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To: dfwgator

While that’s a good reminder, don’t forget to drag out the mortality figures too. Because whil H1N1 aka Swine Flu affected from 700 million to 1.4 billion peole worldwide, it ha a mortality rate of 0.02%

So far the mortality rate from COVAD-19 is running 3.6%.

It’s all about limiting the spread, which is what President Trump is doing. Otherwise, you do the math.


13 posted on 03/12/2020 2:10:21 PM PDT by bigbob (Trust Trump. Trust the Plan.)
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To: Kaslin

I remember it well since my son caught it while immune-system compromised during chemotherapy. He was under a day away from going to the ICU with pneumonia when the turn-around finally began. That was more than a bit close for comfort.


14 posted on 03/12/2020 2:11:26 PM PDT by alancarp (George Orwell was an optimist.)
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To: Kaslin

More than 1000 Americans died in 2009 before the gov’t even acknowledged there was a problem. There was nowhere near this level of dem/media-driven hysteria. The infection rates dwarf this virus.
Yet, even in the face of these and other facts, some insist on taking the hysteria bait being offered up by the dems/media hook, line, and sinker.


15 posted on 03/12/2020 2:22:13 PM PDT by ocrp1982 (ll)
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To: dfwgator

It looks amazingly similar. A lot of 1918 thrown around.


16 posted on 03/12/2020 2:37:39 PM PDT by crusty old prospector
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To: Kaslin

Rush is the best. This article proves it.

I never really appreciated him enough until I heard about the cancer he was battling - my bad.. Now, with the thought of losing him - I guess I am realizing how lucky we have been to have his perspective.


17 posted on 03/12/2020 2:46:44 PM PDT by enumerated
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To: Kaslin

I never got it and no one I know did


18 posted on 03/12/2020 2:52:36 PM PDT by ronnie raygun (nicdip.com)
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To: Kaslin

Vaguely.

People will remember this one though.


19 posted on 03/12/2020 3:25:04 PM PDT by CharleysPride (Peace, Freedom and Prosperity. Thank you, President Trump.)
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To: Kaslin

I remember it vividly, I caught it.


20 posted on 03/12/2020 3:56:04 PM PDT by Shadow44
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