Conservative talk radio host Rush Limbaugh said that the reporting and commentary around the coronavirus outbreak is becoming strikingly similar to the alarmism surrounding climate change.
Limbaugh made the comparison on his radio show on Thursday. The pundit started off by noting that climate change has been at the center of dire predictions for decades.
“Since the 1980s, they have been saying dire consequences await if we do nothing, and the predictions are all for different periods of time — 30 years from today, 30 years from now, 40 years, in the next 50 years,” Limbaugh began. “The predictions are long-term because they know people alive today won’t be alive the end of the prediction period to judge whether they were right or wrong.”
“It’s a scare tactic, a series of them, and you are aware of the transformation this story, this cause of climate change has gone through. I mean, it gets ridiculous sometimes, the predictions that are made, the warnings, the things that are going to kill us. And I’m noting a similar type of reporting now with the coronavirus,” Limbaugh said.
The host brought up an assessment by the World Health Organization’s chief scientist, Soumya Swaminathan, that the virus may not be under control for several years. Swaminathan told an audience at the Financial Times’ Global Boardroom digital conference that “I would say in a four to five-year timeframe we could be looking at controlling this,” and that a vaccine “seems for now the best way out.”
“It’s irresponsible the way this stuff is being reported, and the reason it’s being reported the way it is is because it’s all political now,” Limbaugh noted.
When the shutdown was first announced, “were you led to believe that the shutdown would still be going on nine weeks, ten weeks later?” the host asked. “Or did you think it was a two-to-three week exercise to try to get a handle on things before things got out of control? I’ll guarantee you, the vast majority of people thought it was a temporary thing.”
Limbaugh said experts and the media “keep moving the goalposts on us” from flattening the curve so hospitals are not overrun to ramping up testing to finding a cure for the virus.
“So we had to flatten the curve, had to follow the data of [a] flawed model, we need more testing so we got more testing. It’s not enough. Now that’s not enough. We need antibodies. That doesn’t mean anything anymore. Now we need a vaccine. There may never be a vaccine,” Limbaugh said. “So they keep putting up roadblocks. It’s just like what they do with this climate change stuff, folks. As every dire prediction fails to scare people enough, they come up with more. And some of it is now starting to get absolutely ridiculous in terms of common sense.”
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