Notorious germaphobe Howard Stern revealed to his listeners Monday that he was absent from the SiriusXM airwaves last week because he contracted the coronavirus.
Stern, who managed to avoid getting COVID-19 since the pandemic hit the US by living a hermit-like lifestyle, told his audience Monday that his luck finally ran out.
“See if we can get through this show. We were supposed to be back last week. We weren’t,” Stern said on Monday. His comments were reported by Mediaite.
“Because I got COVID-19.”
Stern, 69, cautioned his audience that this is not an illness to be trifled with.
“I just want to announce something. COVID is really bad,” he added. “You do not want COVID. Oh f–k.”
Stern did not say how he thinks he contracted the virus.
“Man, I went through hell … I’ve really never been this sick,” he said.
Stern also thanked those who helped develop the vaccine against COVID-19.
“What a wallop this thing is — can you imagine if we didn’t have the vaccine?”
Last September, Stern revealed that his paranoia over getting COVID led to arguments with his wife, Beth Stern.
“I’m going crazy with this,” Stern said at the time.
“My wife yelled at me last night. We got into a fight.”
The self-proclaimed “King of All Media” added: “You know how paranoid I am about getting COVID. I haven’t gotten it, and I’m pretty safe, and I really don’t want to get it.”
Last year, Stern’s friend Bill Maher, the host of HBO’s “Real Time,” wondered aloud whether he would get a chance to hang out with his buddy in the post-pandemic era.
The HBO star said he was unsure whether Stern would “ever leave the house” due to his well-documented fear of being exposed to the virus.
“I have a long, storied history, ups and downs with that man, and I find it so sad these days that I can’t see him because of the pandemic,” Maher lamented during an interview with comedian Kevin Nealon on his “Club Random” podcast.
“We don’t agree on that,” Maher said. “Not that I think it has made us not like each other.”
Stern has frequently lashed out at critics who accuse him of going “woke” — saying that he wears the title proudly and touting his COVID-19 vaccination.
“And if woke means I can’t get behind Trump, which is what I think it means, or that I support people who want to be transgender or I’m for the vaccine, dude, call me woke as you f–king want,” Stern said in an on-air rant in September.
In October 2022, Page Six was the first to report that Stern emerged from his “apocalypse bunker” and went out to dinner for the first time since the onset of the pandemic in the spring of 2020.
The “shock jock” was spotted at a Williamsburg eatery alongside Hollywood stars Jennifer Aniston, close friend Jimmy Kimmel, Jon Hamm, Justin Theroux and Jason Bateman.
“I really had an exhausting weekend, emotionally, physically,” he said on his radio show just days after his rare outing.
“For the first time in two years, I ventured out of the house.”
