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Did Your Favorite Celebrity Test Positive for COVID-19?

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By Lambert Strether of Corrente.

“The spectacle is not a collection of images, but a social relation among people, mediated by images.” –Guy DeBord, The Society of the Spectacle

Alert reader MN threw a Google Doc over the transom, entitled “WHAT COVID-19 IS DOING TO PERFORMERS” (“Performers”) which is the first systematic treatment of this topic I have seen. (A PDF is embedded at the end of this post). It’s apparently written and/or maintained by an account owner named Ifrit. The lead paragraph:

Performers are at particularly high-risk for damage from repeat COVID-19 infections due to travel, lifestyle, and contact with the public at large events. This is a continually-updated list of actors, musicians, athletes and public figures who have been adversely affected by COVID/Long COVID. This ranges from canceled events, to quitting performing due to chronic illnesses, to sudden deaths.

The document is a spreadsheet with columns for Performer, Date, Description, and Link (to the source). Each Row is a performer, e.g. “Adele,” and is coded for Canceled Events, Severe or New-Onset Chronic Illness, and Death. It’s an impressive and informative piece of work.

“Performers” is also a little short: There are only 24 items. So I thought to expand the list. I used three sources, color-coded as follows:

[1] “Performers”
[2] WebMed, “Celebrities With Coronavirus” (November 19, 2022)
[3] US Magazine, “Stars Who Tested Positive for COVID-19 in 2022: Justin Bieber, Jimmy Fallon and More” (December 13, 2022)

Here is the expanded list. Scan it, and if you recognize a celeb, please share in comments! (I don’t, frankly, but I’m basically orthoganal to celebrities).

Aaron Tveit[3], Abby Mueller[3], Adam Woolard[3], Adele[1], Aisling Bea[1], Al Roker[3], Alli Dore[3], Alli Simpson[3], Alyssa Milano[2], Amanda Kloots[3], Amy Robach[3], Amy Schumer[3], Ana Navarro[3], Andy Cohen[2], Anna Camp[2], Antonio Banderas[2], Arie Luyendyk Jr. [3], Ashley Park[3], Avery Henry[1], Barack Obama[3], Beanie Feldstein[3], Boris Johnson[2], Brad “Scarface” Jordan[2], Brandon Williamson[1], Bruce Springsteen[1], Bryan Cranston[2], Camila Cabello[3], Cary Elwes[1], Chris Cuomo[2], Christine Bottomley[1], Connie Britton[3], Cristiano Ronaldo[2], Daniel Craig[3], Daniel Dae Kim[2], Dean McDermott[3], Debi Mazar[2], Denzel Washington[3], Dinosaur Jr.[1], Donald Trump[2], Doug Emhoff[3], Drake[3], Duchess Camilla[3], Dustin Johnson[2], Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson[2], Dylan O’Brien[3], Ellen DeGeneres[2], Elton John[3], Eric Clapton[3], George Stephanopoulos[2], Giuliana Rancic[2], Gleb Savchenko[3], Guns N’ Roses[1], Hannah Brown[3], Harry Styles[1], Harvey Weinstein[2], Herman Cain[2], Hillary Clinton[3], Hoda Kotb[3], Hugh Grant[2], Hugh Jackman[3], Idris Elba[2], J-Hope[3], James Cameron[3], James Corden[3], Jenna Bush Hager[3], Jessie Cave[3], Jessie J[3], Jill Biden[3], Jillian Michaels[2], Jimin[3], Jimmy Fallon[3], Jimmy Kimmel[3], Joe Biden[3], John Mayer[3], John Prine[1] [2], Jon Batiste[3], Joseph Kamal[1], Julianne Hough[3], Jungkook[3], Justin Baldoni[3], Justin Bieber[3], Kate Snow[1], Kelly Ripa[3], Kenley Jansen[1], Kevin Durant[2], Khloe Kardashian[2], LA Knight[1], Larry King[2], Lauren Burnham[3], Lauren Graham[3], Lea Michele[3], Lesley Stahl[2], Liam Payne[3], Lisa Vanderpump[3], Lorde[1], Luke Combs[3], Lupita Nyong’o[3], Malika Haqq[3], Martha Stewart[3], Matthew Broderick[3], Maya Vander[3], Mayim Bialik[3], Mel Gibson[2], Melania Trump[2], Michael Sheen[1], Mick Jagger[3], Miley Cyrus[3], Neil Patrick Harris[2], Nick Saban[2], Nicola Coughlan[3], Paul Simon[1], Pearl Jam[1], Pink[2], Prince Charles[2], Prince William[2], Queen Elizabeth II[3], Rand Paul[2], Ringo Starr[1], Ringo Starr[3], Rita Wilson[2], Robert Pattinson[2], Robin Roberts[3], Roy Horn[2], Rudy Gobert[2], Ryan Seacrest[3], SKID ROW[1], Sadie Robertson[2] [3], Sam Smith[1], Sarah Jessica Parker[3], Sarah Snook[3], Savannah Guthrie[1] [3], Sean Penn[3], Selena Gomez[3], Seth Meyers[3], Sharon Osbourne[2] [3], Simon Cowell[3], Stephen Amell[2], Stephen Colbert[3], Steve Martin[1], Sutton Foster[3], Tamron Hall[3], Taron Egerton[3], Taylor Momsen[3], Tom Hanks[2], Tony Shalhoub[2], Tori Spelling[3], Usain Bolt[2], Whitney Port[3], and Whoopi Goldberg[1] [3].

This is a total of 149 names, including the original 25. I haven’t had time to add Date or Description fields, but maybe some kind soul will pass this post on to account owner Ifrit to advance the project.

But why, you ask, is this data interesting? Beyond the intrinsic interest of a list in which Mick Jagger, Paul Simon, and Queen Elizabeth II all appear? Two main reasons:

First, we have an interesting natural experiment, rather like the Harvard Study of Adult Development. We have a class of people who have admitted they have had Covid, so we don’t have to rely on surveys or anything like that. And this class of people leads rather similar lives: Lots of air travel, lots of crowds, lots of time in the Green Room, and so forth. We will be able to follow them for many years, and see what the long-term effects are. Of course, it’s true that we won’t get a lot of detail, their publicists won’t permit that, but events like Cancellations, or withdrawal from performing due to [fill in sequelae], or premature death will all be a matter of public record. And we may be able to use celebrities as proxies for other classes who lead similar lives; sports figures, for example. Or politicians. (It may be that the Category Error Police should drag me away for conflating “performer” and “celebrity,” but the above list wouldn’t be hard to clean.)

Second, we have an interesting social, or even moral, experiment. How many of these celebrities do you remember modeling protective pandemic behavior? Not merely masking, but ventilation, and other non-pharmaceutical interventions? I’m sure some have, but I can’t remember a one.

This leads me to the unfortunate cases of celebrities who are #DavosSafe in private, but don’t model protective behavior in public. (Readers, again feel free to add examples in comments.)

First, Beyoncé’s Non-Pharmaceutical Interventions (NPIs):

Beyoncé’s HEPA filters:

Surely if Beyoncé modeled masking behaviors and showed off her HEPA filters, she’d be showing she wants to save the lives of her fans?

Second, Travis Kelce, Taylor [genuflects] Swift’s putative boyfriend:

(Whatever on combining flu shots and Covid boosters; I wish I’d see a takedown on that idea.) So if Kelce is encouraging people on the pharma side, why in the name of Sweet Suffering Jeebus can’t Swift be saving some lives at her superspreader events by modeling NPIs, and encouraging her fans to mask up? Isn’t her stardom good for anything more than the big bucks? Couldn’t she be using her star power to save some lives?

Third, KISS. From the Vancouver Sun:

Members of the band KISS used a little-known treatment created by a Vancouver biomedical company to avoid getting COVID-19 and cancelling their farewell world tour after lead singer Paul Stanley tested positive for the virus, their manager says.

“I started this with the rock band KISS when Paul Stanley became infected with the coronavirus in Pittsburgh on our tour. I had nowhere to turn. I called some friends of mine in Los Angeles in infectious disease. Nobody had an answer. Nobody had any idea what to do, except to call this company in Canada,” manager Doc McGhee said Monday at a news conference in Toronto.

“Without this, we wouldn’t be on the road. We couldn’t have done the extra 100 shows that we just did.”

he company McGhee called was Vancouver-based Ondine Biomedical, which created Steriwave, a technology that involves putting a disinfecting liquid into the nose and then activating it with lights attached to probes to kill viruses lurking in the respiratory system.

It has been used by Vancouver General Hospital to reduce infections in surgery patients for more than 11 years. A study released last Thursday showed the use of this “nasal photodisinfection” at Ottawa Hospital reduced the length of patients’ hospital stays, readmissions and antibiotic use.

Swell (really). Can’t KISS use their star power to help get word about the technology out there?

* * *

And so it goes. Just another sign of civilizational collapse, I suppose!

APPENDIX

What COVID is doing to performers
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This entry was posted in Guest Post, Pandemic on by .

About Lambert Strether

Readers, I have had a correspondent characterize my views as realistic cynical. Let me briefly explain them. I believe in universal programs that provide concrete material benefits, especially to the working class. Medicare for All is the prime example, but tuition-free college and a Post Office Bank also fall under this heading. So do a Jobs Guarantee and a Debt Jubilee. Clearly, neither liberal Democrats nor conservative Republicans can deliver on such programs, because the two are different flavors of neoliberalism (“Because markets”). I don’t much care about the “ism” that delivers the benefits, although whichever one does have to put common humanity first, as opposed to markets. Could be a second FDR saving capitalism, democratic socialism leashing and collaring it, or communism razing it. I don’t much care, as long as the benefits are delivered. To me, the key issue — and this is why Medicare for All is always first with me — is the tens of thousands of excess “deaths from despair,” as described by the Case-Deaton study, and other recent studies. That enormous body count makes Medicare for All, at the very least, a moral and strategic imperative. And that level of suffering and organic damage makes the concerns of identity politics — even the worthy fight to help the refugees Bush, Obama, and Clinton’s wars created — bright shiny objects by comparison. Hence my frustration with the news flow — currently in my view the swirling intersection of two, separate Shock Doctrine campaigns, one by the Administration, and the other by out-of-power liberals and their allies in the State and in the press — a news flow that constantly forces me to focus on matters that I regard as of secondary importance to the excess deaths. What kind of political economy is it that halts or even reverses the increases in life expectancy that civilized societies have achieved? I am also very hopeful that the continuing destruction of both party establishments will open the space for voices supporting programs similar to those I have listed; let’s call such voices “the left.” Volatility creates opportunity, especially if the Democrat establishment, which puts markets first and opposes all such programs, isn’t allowed to get back into the saddle. Eyes on the prize! I love the tactical level, and secretly love even the horse race, since I’ve been blogging about it daily for fourteen years, but everything I write has this perspective at the back of it.

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79 comments

  1. Louis Fyne

    given the need of most celebrities (including politicans and news figures and TV pundits) to “hold court,” I’d say that every celebrity has been infected—-barring those known to be protective of their privacy, who probably were infected at the general rate of the population

  2. Mark Gisleson

    These are the Mark Crispin Miller emails I delete unread (because they are so frequent).

    Like the graveyards in Ukraine, the truth is out there and will remain out there. This will not be one of history’s unsolved mysteries. The unsolved mystery that will come out of this is how the perpetrators manage to avoid punishment.

  3. dougie

    So, Mick Jagger has been infected 3 times, but Keith Richards is not on the list. Sounds about right to me!

  4. haywood

    Larry King died of Covid, according to Wikipedia. I thought he died during the Obama administration.

    Thinking back, I haven’t read about a celebrity dying from Covid since… maybe Colin Powell?

      1. Wukchumni

        I’ve never heard of most of them-not my idea of being in the public eye, while the name brand celebrity Covid deaths are all well over 60.

        1. Unfinished

          With all due respect, your challenge was to name a single celebrity under age 60 known to have died of Covid. The link I provided lists numerous deaths that meet the criteria, including Nick Cordero’s illness/death which was widely covered in msm.

          This post concerns celebrities, proxies by which we can examine Covid’s impact in the absence of reliable data. Given that absence, it is clear that the full scope of Covid’s impact is obscured. I’m pretty confident that there are further under-sixty celebrity deaths ultimately attributable to Covid.

          This link takes a pretty good look at the issue of unexplained deaths, from 2021 when we still “did” dashboards.
          https://news.rice.edu/news/2021/dashboard-displays-troubling-trend-unexplained-deaths

  9. VTDigger

    Hold up

    “Steriwave, a technology that involves putting a disinfecting liquid into the nose and then activating it with lights attached to probes”

    Didn’t Trump make some comment about injecting people with disinfectant and using “lights inside the body to destroy it” or something in 2020?

    Obviously insane, of course of course.

    1. Lambert Strether Post author

      > Didn’t Trump make some comment about injecting people with disinfectant and using “lights inside the body to destroy it” or something in 2020?

      Say what you will about him, Trump was out there having a presser on Covid daily. Catch Biden doing that! Then came the “lights” comment, Pelosi distorted it (I checked the transcript at the time) to say he advocated injecting bleach, the press and the Democrats created an enormous dogpile and turned Pelosi’s lie into conventional wisdom, and Trump stopped giving the presser. My completely speculative view is that Trump, for once in his life, actually became intellectually intrigued and engaged by something other than money and real estate, but didn’t have the tools to express himself (or a grasp of the science). No good deed goes unpunished, a lesson Fred probably impressed on him deeply.

    2. Avery2

      Chlorine dioxide, like in an OTC mouthwash I buy at Walgreens for 10+ years. Never got the coof.

  10. SomeGuyinAZ

    Losing John Prine was a horrible cost of this [family blogging] covid disease. Since the powers that be are doing everything in their power to leave the public at COVID’s mercy – we’re gonna need a much bigger list shortly.

  17. ddt

    Lambert you’ve double pasted your article.

    Certainly short on sports figures. Just Rudy Gobert (basketball) and Cristiano Ronaldo on that list? That cannot be right.

  21. José Freitas

    An interesting article, but the list of celebrities would be even more interesting if it listed 1) vaccination status, 2) date of vaccination and 3) date of Covid infection. Without that, it’s not very useful.

    1. redleg

      Covid vaccines don’t (yet) sterilize or prevent infection, so how would that be useful?
      What would be useful would identify what prevention or mitigation strategies were in place when they became infected, and how the infection spread at the shows/sets where they were working. That’s valuable information.
      A friend of mine is a costumer for various movies and TV shows. She feels safer from Covid on set than anywhere else: daily testing, masking, and geolocated badges are all required. If someone tests positive they can contact trace in fine detail. I hope that a lucky epidemiologist gets a hold of that data and works it over as it could actually make a difference in improving best management practices for handling a virus outbreak.

      1. Hickory

        Because there is evidence that the vaccines make peope more susceptible to covid not less.

        From this study from the cleveland clinic: “ The risk of COVID-19 also varied by the number of COVID-19 vaccine doses previously received. The higher the number of vaccines previously received, the higher the risk of contracting COVID-19”

        Link to study:
        https://academic.oup.com/ofid/article/10/6/ofad209/7131292?login=false

        See figure 2 at that link for the graph showing this.

        There are many other similar research findings as well.

      2. José de Freitas

        I think it could be useful to separate Long Covid (actually caused by Covid infection) from vaccine induced problems, which frequently resemble Long Covid. I have read many different things re. this issue, and having those numbers would be useful. Suppose for example, 70% of those who report Long Covid were vaccinated and the onset of their Long Covid was after vaccination; or suppose it was only 10% These would be very different situations.

        Other than that, I fully agree with you.

    2. Bsn

      My guess is that a very large majority of these peeps are vaxxed. If they didn’t show their card, or kiss up to the CDC police, they would have stuck out like a sore thumb.
      Djokovic, the tennis star is a good example of “no vax, no play” (music or sport.

    1. cnchal

      What can we do on an individual level to promote safer venues?

      Stay away. Masks in an airy cesspool are useless.

      Trudeau, twice and his ex at least once.

  23. Pat

    Broadway, despite taking some serious precautions when they got to reopen is now a good place to find infectious celebs.
    From your list, Aaron Tveit, Josh Groban, Anna Leigh Ashford, Lea Michele, Beanie Feldstein, Julianne Hough, Matthew Broderick, Sarah Jessica Parker, Hugh Jackman, Sutton Foster all were either out because of Covid or performances were cancelled because they got it.

    Lesser known performers are often out, and the musical Shucked announced the cast wouldn’t be meeting the public after the performances as a mitigating factor.

    Regarding death, I have noticed that we are seeing an uptick of celebrities dying from cancer and other aggressive diseases over the last year. I always wonder. Could this be because their immune system was compromised. Not just getting sick but the aggressive speed we are seeing in some cases. (It may be too many years around AIDs, especially in the beginning. Immune disfunction provides fertile ground for diseases. And this time the people in charge would rather see the return of rarely seen diseases than admit that Covid affects the immune system long term.

  24. Mikel

    Remember the earliest days of Covid? The spread could almost be tracked by traveling celebs…

    “Surely if Beyoncé modeled masking behaviors and showed off her HEPA filters, she’d be showing she wants to save the lives of her fans?”

    https://tour.beyonce.com/

    This site covers the fashions of her tour. And pics of fans, musicians, backstage, etc.
    No fashion designs highlighting masks. No pics of the HEPA filters.

  25. ChrisRUEcon

    As always, sir … excellent work. A trend I have been following as well.

    What is it going to take?! Most people still think it’s “over”, and few are taking non-pharmaceutical interventions.

    If Hollywood was taking maximum precautions, I wonder why this did not bleed over into the music scene?

    UPDATE: said protocols ended in May!

    So now the silent killer will just pick them off slowly, and only those directly affected or perhaps within one or two degrees of separation will care.

    #Sigh … Nothing left but the musical interlude (via YouTube).

  26. Jeff N

    Celine Dion’s “stiff-person syndrome”?

    Jonathan Toews:

    He announced on February 19, 2023 that he was still suffering from symptoms of long COVID and Chronic Immune Response Syndrome. He offered no timetable for his return, commenting, “it has reached the point where I had no choice but to step back and concentrate on getting healthy.” Toews returned to the Blackhawks’ lineup after a two-month absence on April 1. On April 13, Blackhawks general manager Kyle Davidson announced that the team would not re-sign Toews after his contract expired at the end of the season.

    On August 17, Toews announced he is not retiring from the NHL, but rather sitting out the entire 2023–24 season to focus on his health

  28. ProNewerDeal

    Are certain occupations occurring indoors, that are also in discretionary/non-Essential sectors, like these examples in Entertainment, just not safe during the COVID pandemic?

    What about a fitness trainer leading a class, that it would be impossible to not sweat to the point of fogging glasses under a N95 mask? Similar to the aforementioned pro hocker player Towes?

    worker at a karaoke bar, where drunk customers are singing/yelling loudly, 95%+ unmasked, to where the exposure could be excessive even with (likely being the only person worker or customer) the worker wearing a N95 mask?

    What about occupations where in principal they could be done wearing a N95 mask, but social pressure from customers or Supervisors might make it challenging in practice. In particular consumer-facing sales reps like car dealers, realtors, waiters, etc?

    OTOH even pre-COVID, certain jobs like ER physicians & nurses were fast-paced physical stressful job wearing a mask, pre-COVID. So if it is essential I guess it can be done, if the Supervisors and society enable it. And if it is un-Essential like the fitness class trainer, perhaps it should not be done.

    1. ChrisRUEcon

      Oh wow … from like a year ago! Definitely missed that one. Sad to hear, but no one seems to want to do the needful.

  30. frosty zoom

    this is nuts.

    a cashier at a busy grocery store is going to be in much closer contact with many more people than a performer on a stage 10 metres from the audience.

    masks? how can you be serious about such nonsense? get yourself some bear spray, an aerosol much bigger than a virus, and see how well your n95 “protects” you.

    vaccines? hahahaha, how on earth can you vaccinate against something that mutates so quickly? how can something injected into the blood stop a pathogen in the nose?

    and, how do these celebrities know they have “covid” — a pcr test at 47 cycles?

    what you really should be discussing is why there is a 12 sigma deviation in excess mortality among 0-54 year-olds since the injections were first started.

    1. Lambert Strether Post author

      Or the many silly — and link-free — remarks in your comment, this is perhaps the silliest:

      And

      a cashier at a busy grocery store is going to be in much closer contact with many more people than a performer on a stage 10 metres from the audience.

      First, I am fully aware that Covid has taken a terrible toll on the working class, particularly customer-facing workers:

      Second, please give consideration to the idea of reading the post. I wrote:

      First, we have an interesting natural experiment, rather like the Harvard Study of Adult Development. We have a class of people who have admitted they have had Covid, so we don’t have to rely on surveys or anything like that. And this class of people leads rather similar lives: Lots of air travel, lots of crowds, lots of time in the Green Room, and so forth. We will be able to follow them for many years, and see what the long-term effects are.

      Right or wrong, this idea has nothing to do with the absolute numbers of those infected.

      I hope you find the happiness you seek. Elsewhere!

      1. Keith Newman

        One of the pluses of Naked Capitalism is that morons who make comments are permanently banned. Way to go Lambert!
        I read the comments on some other sites where bigots are removed but morons are allowed. The Globe and Mail for example. It is so tedious I only read the comments there very rarely.

        1. Michael King

          “I read the comments on some other sites where bigots are removed but morons are allowed. The Globe and Mail for example. It is so tedious I only read the comments there very rarely.”

          Absolutely in agreement. Thank you.

    2. XXYY

      get yourself some bear spray, an aerosol much bigger than a virus, and see how well your n95 “protects” you.

      This is basically how n95 fit tests are performed. There’s a substance called Bittrex that has a god-awful smell and taste. You put on your mask and then spray some vaporized Bittrex around your head. If you can smell or taste it, your mask isn’t fitting and needs to be adjusted. This is what occupational safety people do when fitting people with respirators.

      This is very this is very worth doing if you rely on n95s either occupationally or for covid protection. You will be surprised how badly some masks work, and how well some others do.

  31. Es s Cetera

    I have friends in various capacities in the film industry and, from what I’ve been told, there may be another factor to consider here – throughout the pandemic the industry had strict protocols which required weekly medical testing for everyone, you couldn’t show up for work without a recent negative test in hand. Compared to the regular population which doesn’t have said protocols, this could skew the results?

    I’m unsure if the protocols are still in effect these days, need to catch up with my friends.

    1. Lambert Strether Post author

      > I’m unsure if the protocols are still in effect these days, need to catch up with my friends.

      Please do. I remember reading that Hollywood was strong on protocols, but that was like a year ago and I don’t know what they’re doing now.

      1. Pat

        Covid protocols were officially over for the film and television guilds on May 11 to coincide with the official end of Covid.

        from the SAG website

        I cannot confirm but I believe that backstage protocols were eased along with the audience masking requirements being theater optional as of the middle of last year.

        That does not stop individual productions from continuing them, unlikely as it is. It just means that concerned performers or crew members are on their own unless producers are worried about delays or insurance issues and enact testing and masking requirements for individual productions. (Vaccine mandates would possibly face legal challenges.)

      2. Es s Cetera

        Yes, I’ve checked and my friends in the industry concur, as Pat says, the studios stopped all protocols as soon as covid was announced as “over”. Apparently, however, there are rumors of bringing them back. Although it’ll be a while before anyone returns to work on account of the strike.

  32. The Rev Kev

    I’m wondering how accurate the reporting is about who is sick with Covid and who has died of it. Back during the early days of the AIDS epidemic, wealthier families would have the death certificates of their famous family members bodged up so as not to show the cause of death being due to AIDS. There was a lot of bad stigma to being infected with AIDS back then and I only think that it was when Rock Hudson came out saying that he was infected did things start to change.

    1. JBird4049

      It was interesting reading the weekly obituaries in the Sunday edition of the San Francisco Chronicle and seeing all those people dying “after a Brief illness” often at home. Usually younger men, but not always especially after the hemophiliacs and surgery patients started dying from the contaminated blood supply and also hardcore addicts because they often shared needles. That was when I understood how irrational people could be about diseases. I mean just why should anyone feel or accept personal shame dying from any disease, but especially from an accident connected to hemophilia or surgery?

    2. Lambert Strether Post author

      > the early days of the AIDS epidemic

      The comparison between Covid and AIDS is being made more and more, now that the effects of immune dysregulation are becoming more and more salient.

      1. JBird4049

        And seeing this “immune dysregulation” again forty years later is making me both angry and depressed.

      2. chris

        I agree. I keep wondering when we’ll need laws to protect those who have had COVID from later exclusion in different areas. Life insurance. Disability insurance. Health insurance. Employment contracts. I can see where parties might want to completely exclude those who have had COVID any number of times from those. And who knows about the epigenetic effects here? Are those damaged markers affecting babies too?

        I have had too many friends and acquaintances experience immune dysregulation, rapid onset cancer, strokes, or death in the last 3 years. I hope that sooner or later we acknowledge what is going on and try to protect ourselves!

      3. britzklieg

        Yeah, I remember making that association in a comment only months after covid had started and some jerk named D. Roderer responded “LOL, covid isn’t anything like AIDS” while claiming to be a scientist who “knew” the truth as opposed to the know nothing that he insinuated I was…. next time I saw a comment from him he claimed to be an engineer or something else, offering his expertise on a totally different subject. And as someone who began, purposefully, fanning the flames of skepticism about the crap mRNA vaccine, receiving admonition and or just ignored (while being placed in permanent moderation), someone who very early on found a report, in Italian from an Italian doctor (I believe his name was Zannini – a report which, although bookmarked, was later never to be found again on the internet) asserting the thrombotic nature of the virus while everyone else was stuck on the respiratory aspect, someone (a retired musician who had lost a partner to AIDS) who through instinct alone began to question all the crap data (and lack thereof) emitting from the experts to justify what we now can see was a completely failed process of dealing with the scourge, someone who was willing to listen to all qualified medical professionals only to be told that this person was “just a nurse” or that person was “crazy” while the flawed and changing opinions of “heroes” like Feigl-Ding and Topol were incessantly amplified…

        Reviewing my comments from the beginning demonstrates that my instincts were spot on and the emotion I feel from all this (“react, react!”) is not resentment but anger. I think that anger is more than justified.

  33. SocalJimObjects

    Old timers at Goldman Sachs would probably advise celebrities to be long term greedy by protecting their fans, but then again it’s probably every artist’s dream to play to an audience of one …. himself or herself.

  34. Paul J-H

    Over here in Europe, there have been too frequent instances of top soccer players collapsing due to heart failure. I haven’t really documented this but already in the Netherlands I seem to remember 3 cases, which seems a lot. All men at the top of their game, fit, around 22 y-o.

  35. Lambert Strether Post author

    > Over here in Europe, there have been too frequent instances of top soccer players collapsing due to heart failure

    Yes, I’ve many examples but never an aggregation.

    Pure speculation, but I think the virus actually harms people with much better than average cardio, like athletes and possibly people who live at high altitudes; or in scientific terms, “[mumbles, something something] epithelium.”

    1. Acacia

      “How long is the long COVID? a retrospective analysis of football players in two major European Championships“

      https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.03.11.23287138v1.full

      Finlay MacNab: The footballer living with long Covid https://bbc.in/3CRB19q

      “Long Covid tackles even the fittest athletes”

      https://www.newsroom.co.nz/lockerroom/long-covid-tackles-even-the-fittest-athletes

      “Celebrities Speak Out on Long Covid”

      https://longcovidfamilies.org/celebrities-speak-out/

    2. Bsn

      I used to document so much about Covid, the vax, and so forth but I seldom do now. After one knows that 2+2=4 the conversation about why becomes less and less important. I feel that way about Covid. However, I did document sport and musician illnesses and deaths but I can’t find a link I had of a site featuring an ongoing count of sudden death cases. Here is one, a video, that’s long but “telling”. From March ’21 to June of ’23, they document 2000 athlete deaths with short pics of obituaries, news headlines, etc. from all over the world. Le video: https://rumble.com/v2y8l88-2000-athletes-collapsing-dying-heart-problems-blood-clots-march-2021-to-jun.html

    3. LY

      As a former soccer player and a runner, the recovery from getting COVID (confirmed by PCR) was the longest I’ve had. I monitor sleep, heart rate, and fitness with a sports watch, and the drop in fitness was steeper than any before – whether caused by illness or injury like the bad ankle sprain followed by physical rehab (if I were younger and not willing to give up playing soccer, I would have gotten surgery).

      I don’t think Kai Havertz’s career has hit the same heights since getting COVID, though playing at Chelsea tends to do that.

  36. Paul J-H

    Dutch footballer Wout Weghorst did not play for some time due to COVID19.
    Nazour Mazraoui (Moroccan/Dutch) soccer player had heart problems after COVID19 (https://www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2023/01/30/de-sportwereld-laat-covid-19-achter-zich-maar-dat-lukt-niet-iedereen-ik-heb-het-geprobeerd-te-pushen-maar-mn-longen-wilden-niet-a4155737)

    This same link mentions e.g. Alphonse Davis and some other of sportspeople who got COVID19 and recovered or not (e.g. cyclist Chris Froome).

  37. Pat

    Even if many of us here have our spider senses tingling regarding the athletes collapsing and friends and celebrities fighting circulatory problems or fast moving cancers where there is little family history, how many of those patients and physicians could just not be thinking about a possible long Covid connection at all? Even though HIV has been around for awhile, how many physicians have come of age in the decades since treatments were available to help mitigate and delay the effects? How many have real world knowledge of disease in people with suppressed and failing immune systems? And when real time and interaction with patients is not just limited and discouraged, how many have time to think beyond the obvious? There will be IM Doc and others like him trying to shine a light on things. But even for them, there are so many things making their jobs harder than it should be.

    Add to that a political and economic system who really do not want the public to know that just walking into the wrong room while breathing is a form of Russian roulette for your body’s overall immunity, and well…it is a lot easier to control that information if most doctors and patients don’t know the connection at all.

    If I am right, it could take years for real awareness to come. And if the past couple of years are any example, it will come from smart people figuring this out and studying it in other countries. Getting time, information and funding here just won’t happen.

  38. Anon

    Great work Lambert! Adding to the article, for those of you who are Twitter inclined, I have found the Twitter account of the person who created the doc here:

    https://twitter.com/waltz_tales

    I’m sure that he (they?) would appreciate having their work shown to a highly trafficked website such as this.

  39. Charles C.

    Perhaps not a “celebrity” many will recognize, but Andy Gill of Gang of Four was almost certainly an early victim of COVID. He died of “pneumonia and multiple organ failure” after a sudden, short illness in February 2020. If I recall correctly, he had just returned to Britain from a trip to Asia. I was sick (also almost certainly COVID) around the same time. At the time, it seemed too much of a coincidence not to be related to COVID and was one of the first intimations I had that the developing situation was truly serious.

  40. Bsn

    Hmm, is there anyone else who doesn’t have any “Favorite Celebrities”? I guess I’m missing something important.

  42. dandyandy

    Strange nobody mentioned the notorious Serb, Novak Djokovic, who despite having been banned from competing at Aus and US opens, for not having had the jab but having had Covid, and who then went on to clock some more Slams anyway. They must have very good water over there in backward Serbia.

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