Just hours after World Health Organization officials said they are preparing for a “potential pandemic” as coronavirus cases increase worldwide, conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh told his listeners that he would try to put the concerning news about the novel virus “in perspective” for them.
“It looks like the coronavirus is being weaponized as yet another element to bring down Donald Trump,” Limbaugh said during his Monday show. “Now, I want to tell you the truth about the coronavirus. … Yeah, I’m dead right on this. The coronavirus is the common cold, folks.”
In a roughly 10-minute segment, Limbaugh criticized the media for overhyping the virus in “an effort to get Trump,” repeated a debunked fringe theory linking the outbreak to Chinese biological weapons research and found time to attack Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).
Critics accused the recent Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient of “spreading bad information” about coronavirus to the millions who tune into his show, calling the remarks “wildly irresponsible” in light of the potential pandemic.
Though more than 80 percent of current coronavirus cases are mild, the new strain that originated in Wuhan, China, in late December has since sickened 77,658 people with a cumulative death toll of 2,663, according to the most recent official figures today.
“Stunningly reckless,” tweeted Charlie Sykes, founder of the Bulwark, a conservative news site.
Coronaviruses are a large family of viruses that cause illnesses ranging from the common cold to more severe diseases such as severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, which infected more than 8,000 people in 2003, according to the WHO.
The coronavirus at the center of the ongoing outbreak is a strain that had not been identified in humans until cases started cropping up in Wuhan last year, the WHO reported.
Limbaugh went on to reference the fringe theory that the virus originated from a Chinese laboratory in the city where the outbreak began — an idea that has been widely dismissed by experts.
“Based on the virus genome and properties there is no indication whatsoever that it was an engineered virus,” Richard Ebright, a professor of chemical biology at Rutgers University, told The Post’s Adam Taylor.
In another interview with The Post, Vipin Narang, an associate professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said the suggestion that a lab accident caused the outbreak was “highly unlikely,” citing a lack of evidence.
“It’s a skip in logic to say it’s a bioweapon that the Chinese developed and intentionally deployed, or even unintentionally deployed,” said Narang, a political science professor with a background in chemical engineering.
Still, Limbaugh appeared convinced that the virus was probably “a Chicom laboratory experiment.”
“I’m telling you, the Chicoms are trying to weaponize this thing,” Limbaugh said, using a slang term to refer to Chinese Communists. He later added, “Well, every nation is working on things like this, and the Chicoms obviously in their lab are doing something here with the coronavirus — and it got out.”
To conclude his remarks, Limbaugh sought to remind his listeners of the virus’s origin.
“It came from a country that Bernie Sanders wants to turn the United States into a mirror image of, Communist China,” he said, attacking the self-described democratic socialist who has taken a commanding lead among Democrats vying for the presidential nomination. “That’s where it came from. It didn’t come from an American lab. It didn’t escape from an American research lab. It hasn’t been spread by Americans. It starts out in a communist country.”
Social media erupted with a flurry of reactions as transcriptions of Limbaugh’s comments went viral.
Most tore into the host, slamming the segment as “so irresponsible” and “dangerous.”
“Rush Limbaugh is telling his listeners not to worry about the coronavirus covid-19 because ‘it’s just the common cold’ and ‘there’s a 98% survival rate,’” one person tweeted. “If he has an audience of, say, 10 million listeners and they all caught it, 98% survival rate means 200,000 dead listeners.”