"Polio is not a Virus" Rush Limbaugh Said on Radio Today

Today at about 2:35 PM (EST) on his nationally syndicated radio program, Rush Limbaugh made a keen observation.

"Polio is not a virus," Limbaugh speciously declared to bolster his flawed argument that scientists have no vaccines for viruses.

"America's Anchorman," as he calls himself, alerted his audience that he was putting on his thinking cap and made us all proud as he mused aloud, among other inaccuracies: "There are no vaccines for viruses." 

The comments came after he read a report that suggested scientists were at least 20 years away from an AIDs vaccine.  Limbaugh found it preposterous that scientists were looking for a vaccine for AIDs since, according to his superior grasp of world events, scientists have never discovered a vaccine for any viruses. 

Someone might want to explain to Limbaugh that we have vaccines for smallpox, chickenpox, the Human Papillomavirus, influenza, Hepatitus A and B, the rabies virus, the Japanese Encephalitus Virus, measles, and mumps--all of which are...viruses. 

Someone off the microphone may have alerted Limbaugh to the fact that he was getting way off-course. Limbaugh said, "Well there's a vaccine for the flu, but then you get the flu any way and it misses the strain you've caught." He said this as if it negated the existence of a vaccine for the common flu...which is a virus.

The misstatement provides an opportunity for Democrats to make a laughingstock out of a man whose comments make Reverend Jeremiah Wright's diatribe sound like the instructions on how to assemble a vacuum cleaner...a virus for which there is apparently no vaccine.

Media Matters is sure to have the audio tape, and they ought to release it to the world.