Media Matters Provides Transcript of Limbaugh's "Polio" Comments

Media Matters provided OpEdNews with a transcript of comments made by conservative talk-show host Rush Limbaugh that shows Limbaugh doesn't know that scientists have discovered vaccines for viruses.

Here are the comments from his nationally syndicated radio program made yesterday at around 2:35 PM (EST). 

Limbaugh: Now, again – I, I’m gonna’ put on my Captain Commonsense cap here: We’re talking about a virus, are we not? And do we have a cure for any virus? We don’t have a cure. We don’t have a cure for the common cold. We don’t have a cure for any strain of influenza. What viruses, HR, do we have vaccines for?

Yeah, we have a flue vaccine but it doesn’t – I mean, it – you still get the flu with the vaccine and sometimes the vaccine misses the strain altogether. We don’t have a vaccine against the common cold which is a virus.

I don’t know that – well, you have, you have a vaccine for small pox, measles – yeah, but are they viruses? Is the – that, that’s – [crosstalk] see that – vir, virus here. Infections, you know, we can deal with but a virus – my, my commonsense is we, we don’t have a cure for any virus and so the notion that we were ever gonna’ have a cure for AIDS or a cure – or even a vaccine for it – always – I always was cur – who? What is?

OK. Smallpox is a virus. So we got, we got – we have – we do have a vaccine for that. And see – what else is there – small – what, what’s the other pox? Chickenpox. Forget that. That’s what I had. The chickenpox. But polio – that’s not a virus. [Taps on desk]

It – I mean, admirable effort, don’t misunderstand – I just, I never – we’ve had such little success with viruses. I mean, I – if we, if we get a vaccine against, a vaccine against the common cold or flu – and I don’t know that anybody’s researching that even so…

What every child in kindergarten knows is 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 and polio-all of which are...viruses. 

"My commonsense is we, we don’t have a cure for any virus," Limbaugh tells his listeners. Well at least he cited his source. 

"But polio – that’s not a virus," the host also claims. Polio is also known as the Poliovirus. And it is a...virus. The comments come at a time when Limbaugh and his ilk are trying to make a recording of a Jeremiah Wright sermon an around-the-clock story because they have nothing else to throw at the Democrats. 

The comments provide an opportunity for Democrats to turn Limbaugh into the butt of an on-going joke and put him in a place that he does not like to be--the subject of the media.