RUSH: One of the big news stories of the day that actually can be traced back to yesterday is the projections that our government experts used to shut down the country have turned out to be way off. It's exactly as I feared, exactly as I warned. The models, we're told, have turned out to be way off. They overpredicted death. They overpredicted cases. And they overpredicted hospitalization. Now, there are some caveats to this, so just stick with me for a moment.

Now, it is striking, since just a couple days ago, these officials were comparing this week to Pearl Harbor and 9/11, and some were saying death could be higher than the Civil War. Now, that is 500,000-600,000 people, and they were out there saying that. In fact, they were so concerned that Dr. Birx told people they shouldn't even go outside to go to the grocery store or to the pharmacy.

Really? So they had to ask her to clarify that. "Well, what I meant was the whole family doesn't need to pack in the car and go to the grocery store. Just one person and maybe once every two weeks." Can somebody explain something else? Why is it okay to go to the grocery store and pharmacy, not to work? (interruption) Well, no, I can answer my own question.

Grocery stores, in some case, are limiting the number of people in the store at one time to 50 -- and they can do what they can to maintain social distancing. And those going back to work might violate the social distancing laws, too many people too close together. But the grocery store is work. I mean, there are people going to work at the grocery, people going to work at a pharmacy.

Salena Zito has a piece warming my heart today. I have been trying to tell people: Look at the jobs keeping this country afloat led by farmers and truck drivers -- and who are they? Those are industries and people routinely mocked and made fun of by elites because, you know, "They're not sophisticated. They're not formally educated. Farming? That's working in the dirt. Ew! Cow manure. Ew!"

If you can't do the job wearing coat and tie, then somehow it's a lesser job so she's a got a piece today celebrating and actually thanking the nation's truckers. 'Cause I'm telling you, without 'em, your grocery store wouldn't be open -- and without the farmers, the truckers wouldn't have anything to put in their trailers to go driving along the highways and byways of America.

I've just always found that fascinating, that when you get down to brass tacks, the industries that keep this country going and fed happen to be jobs that are, in many cases, located in the proverbial flyover country. Now, let's get back to the models here for just a second. It's striking. A couple days ago, these officials were comparing this week to Pearl Harbor and 9/11.

Some were saying death could be higher than the Civil War.

That's 500,000 people.

Dr. Birx was telling people they shouldn't even go outside to the grocery store, that this next week and a half is gonna be the zenith; it's gonna be peak bad. There is something out there called the COVID Tracking Project. It's a team of analysts who tabulate coronavirus data from state tallies found in the Chris Murray model, state of Washington.

It's the IHME model, and it has been used and is being used by White House health officials. It overestimated the number of Americans hospitalized by the virus by tens of thousands. Now, I don't expect everybody to remember everything I say on this program because the amount of content on this program is voluminous. The amount of content in the three-hour program here is far more than you'll find in three hours anywhere else.

But one of my primary points of interest has been hospitalizations, because you would think with everything else we're being told... We're being told hospitals are being overrun -- and in some places they are, but not everywhere. And in most cases, hospitalization... In fact, New York state hospitalizations are down three days in a row. But as I say, hang on for some caveat numbers out of New York that Governor Cuomo just delivered today reversing the trend.

They thought they'd hit the apex; now, looks like we haven't. We got more cases in New York than we have in Italy, for example. We have more cases in New York than we have in Beijing. We have more cases in New York than we have in Shanghai. We have more cases in New York than we have in Shenzhen. We have more cases in New York than we have in General Tso's chicken. (interruption) What's that? (interruption)

"How is it possible?" (laughing) Look, I could speculate widely here, but I ain't gonna because they're already trying to blame me. They're trying to blame me! They're trying to blame me for stuff I said in February that Dr. Fauci also said in February. I have it on audiotape here or audio digital, and we'll share it with you. The fact that they're still trying to blame me means they're looking at this as nothing but something partisan.

Of course we have to react to it, which is what we do. Anyway, the COVID Tracking Project, Chris Murray's model's projections were twice as bad as things have turned out to be. The models were almost twice as bad, and those models are why we shut down the economy. Those models are why we've taken the Draconian, drastic steps that we've taken.

Sunday night, the IHME Washington state Chris Murray model cut a lot of their projected numbers almost in half. In fact, the actual numbers show an overestimation of hospitalizations by eight times and overestimation of ICU beds needed 6.4 times (this is how overshot the models did) and an overestimation of ventilators needed by 40 times.

They overshot the number of ventilators needed by 40 times! You go to a White House press briefing in the last two weeks, and one of the primary topics has been ventilators and how many we have and where we're gonna get 'em and how long it takes to make 'em -- and this model overshot the estimated number of ventilators needed by 40 times.

So on Monday (yesterday), this model, the IHME model, lowered its projected number of deaths by more than 10%, 93,000 to 81,000. So we started at 2.2 million -- a number that should never have been mentioned because it was based on if we didn't do anything, if we didn't shut down, if we didn't distance from each other, if we didn't do any of those mitigating factors.

But we did; so the 2.2 number should have never have been used. Then we heard a hundred thousand to 200,000, and then 240,000, and now this model is down to 81,000. That's still a really, really high number. Don't misunderstand me here. We're talking about the wide variations in the projects that were used. The same stuff is happening in man-made climate change. The exact same stuff is happening.

Now, the same model, the Murray model also lowered projections of the number of states -- lowered the projections, lowered the guesses of the number of states -- that will not have enough regular ICU beds from 37 to 20. For example, on Friday this model projected 3,000 deaths in Tennessee. It projected the state would not have enough hospital beds at the virus' peak.

But yesterday, the model lowered the death projections in Tennessee from 3,000 to 587 and projected the state would need just 16% of the hospital beds in the state for coronavirus victims. Across the country the most recent data from a number of states indicates the number of new hospitalizations has been on the decline for several days, and the hospitalizations a key number.

Now, I'm gonna take a break. There is major contradictory news to all of this I just shared with you from Governor Cuomo's briefing today. I'll give you that when we get back.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Governor Cuomo had his daily press conference at 11 o'clock today, and he had the new official numbers from New York, and the official count indicates that they thought they'd had a plateau and were on the downside of the mountain, as the saying goes. Today's numbers contraindicate that.

New York state reported its deadliest day of the COVID-19 outbreak yesterday: 5,489 deaths, up from 4,758. Governor Cuomo said it's an increase of 731. So the death toll went up in New York. It did not continue to decline. Now, again, there's caveats to this. We don't really know for sure how many people are dying of coronavirus versus people that had underlying conditions that the coronavirus may have hastened.

Cardiac arrest, diabetes, any number of things. What's happening is that many deaths are being automatically recorded now as COVID-19 for -- I don't know, whatever -- the simplicity; there may be some politics involved. But, anyway, this is the first increase day over day since last Friday, and everybody thought we're on the downhill side in New York.

Now, the hospitalization numbers out of New York were good. They continue to fall. But -- and here's the thing -- the death count in New York now is back up where these IHME projections were for New York. So these guys in the modeling business are all out there; they're saying yesterday way overestimated.

Now the news out of New York today is that their original projection for New York looks like it was correct. Which means that maybe New York has not peaked yet. Scary thought, that maybe it hasn't peaked yet. New York also now has more confirmed cases than Italy -- and Italy, of course, was considered the absolute worst. It's 138,000 cases in New York, 132,000 in Italy. But again, that could be that we're just testing more.

The more testing that we do, the more cases are gonna be reported. The number of deaths in Italy remains three times that in New York. Italy has had 15,000, 16,500 deaths. New York is around 5,500, 5,489, 5,500-something. Italy still way ahead in their death count.