Sully Erna Says COVID-19 ‘Isn’t a Global Killer,’ Thinks Death Count is Inflated
In a new interview, Sully Erna discussed the coronavirus pandemic.
In an appearance on The Mistress Carrie Podcast, Erna said, “I’m sorry, man, and there may be some people that may get mad at me about saying this, but COVID is not a global killer. It’s doing damage, and it’s certainly affecting the elderly, and we pray for them, and we are really sympathetic towards that, and that’s why we’re all wearing masks, that’s why we’re all doing our job. Because there’s a lot of us that aren’t afraid of COVID, and we know that we’re probably gonna blow right through it. But we don’t wanna roll the dice with our loved ones, so we’re being responsible.”
Erna continued, “But at the same time, the reality is this isn’t a global killer. It’s gonna pass, we’re gonna get past it, and we need to get back to normal. So we have to influence the strong to get out there and start working and start going to school and doing what they need to do so we can create population immunity. That’s what’s gonna get us through this. And then we’ll be able to get back to normal.”
Currently, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) reports that over 515,000 people in the United States have died from COVID-19. As of this publishing, Google News shows over 2.56 million people worldwide have died from COVID-19.
Despite these reported numbers, Erna added, “There’s been a lot of things proven within the media, the news, to who’s on what side of what, and whether some of this was a political agenda to begin within, whether the numbers are accurate enough to be able to base it on, those half a million people dead. Because there was a lot of people coming forward, a lot of doctors and everything, saying, ‘Why the f— are we being asked to put COVID on everything? Why did someone just die of pneumonia, and we have to write ‘COVID’? Why did someone come in and have a heart attack, and we’re being told to write ‘COVID’?'”
Erna continued, “So whether that half-a-million number is correct, that’s the part that I feel like we need to be responsible enough to try and be optimistic about not steering people down one rabbit hole, because that’s what CNN does on one side and Fox does on the other side. So CNN delivers one side of this, and Fox takes you down a different rabbit hole.
While the sentiment voiced by Erna about inflated numbers has yet to be actually proven with concrete evidence, the Godsmack frontman does seem concerned about how COVID-19 can have long lingering side effects.
“The thing with COVID is I myself know at least — at least — a dozen, two dozen people, maybe, that have gotten COVID,” said Erna. “And I have a friend of mine that, three months later, he’s, like, ‘I’m still having some issues. And it’s weird — I’m getting dizzy spells. I’m getting this, that and the other thing. And what the f—?’ And then I know another group of people that were, like, ‘Dude, I’ve had a hangover that was worse than this. I had a fever of 99 for about a day and a half and haven’t had a problem since.’ And so it affects everybody differently, and that’s the big mystery.”
One person in the rock world that contracted COVID-19 and is dealing with lingering side effects is Maynard James Keenan, who has talked about dealing with continued issues with coughing and lung damage. The Tool frontman said back in February that following getting the virus in February 2020, he got it again in late 2020 and was briefly hospitalized in December.
“I could barely put two words together without going into a coughing fit. It ended up kind of also progressing into pneumonia,” said Keenan. “So, if I stayed in the hospital, they said, ‘Okay, we can keep you here, but you’re fighting 12 other people for a bed and a ventilator we don’t have, so what do you want to do?’ I’m like, ‘Well, I need to breathe and I need to sleep.'”
Keenan then opted to finish out his recovery from home saying, “So, you’re just treating symptoms at that point. There’s nothing you can do other than treat the symptom.”
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