The coronavirus is continuing to spread beyond China, with more than 300 now also confirmed sick in Italy, where the government has deployed military personnel to enforce a quarantine on infected areas.
Yet as bad as the virus is, conservative talk radio legend Rush Limbaugh believes that it is being “weaponized” by Democrats to gain electoral advantage, as Breitbart reports.
“It looks like the coronavirus is being weaponized as yet another element to bring down Donald Trump,” Limbaugh said during his program on Monday. I want to tell you the truth about the coronavirus.”
“The coronavirus is the common cold, folks. The drive-by media hype of this thing as a pandemic, as the Andromeda strain, as, ‘Oh my God, if you get it, you’re dead,’ do you know what the — I think the survival rate is 98%,” he added.
Coronavirus deadlier than a cold
While it is true that the coronavirus often causes symptoms that minic those of the common cold, the strain that emerged from China (dubbed Covid-19 by the World Health Organization) is far deadlier. Despite afflicting millions each year, the common cold is almost never fatal. By way of contrast, John Hopkins University reported 2705 Covid-19 deaths worldwide as of Tuesday, most of them in China.
“98% of people who get the coronavirus survive,” Limbaugh went on, noting that Covid-19 is “a respiratory system virus.”
Limbaugh also rejected the idea that Covid-19 must have originated in a food market, as the Chinese government initially claimed.
Chinese bioweapon?
“It probably is a ChiCom laboratory experiment that is in the process of being weaponized,” Limbaugh speculated. “All superpower nations weaponize bioweapons.”
“They experiment with them. The Russians, for example, have weaponized fentanyl. Now fentanyl is also not what it is represented to be.” declared.
Covid-19 has led to serious manufacturing shortfalls in China, and the economic ripple effects are making their way to the United States. The Dow Jones Industrial average plunged on Monday and continued to drop on Tuesday. Some fear these developments could impact President Trump’s re-election efforts, and Limbaugh believes the media establishment stands ready to fan the flames.
“I’m not trying to get you to let your guard down,” Limbaugh conceded, pointing out that, “Nobody wants to get any of this stuff.”
“But we’re not talking about something here that’s going to wipe out your town or your city if it finds its way there. This is a classic illustration of how media coverage — even if this media coverage isn’t stacked — even if this just the way media normally does things,” Limbaugh concluded.
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