Whoopi Goldberg suspects that last year she contracted an early form of the coronavirus that developed into pneumonia.
The 64-year-old Sister Act actress was hospitalized for a month at the start of last year with pneumonia and sepsis.
Despite COVID-19 only surfacing in China at the end of 2019 in December, the comedian and actress reckons she might have caught a version of the current coronavirus that then evolved into what is spreading across the globe today.
Speaking as a guest on British TV show Loose Women, which has a similar format to Goldberg’s show The View, she said: “I personally think that people like me last year had some form of this and it evolved into COVID-19. This is no joke.”
Whoopi Goldberg spent a month in hospital last year
“I was in the hospital for about a month,” she added. “I’ve never been that sick in my life; It was crazy. So this is no joke, people are dying. We’ve got to pay attention.”
Because of last year’s illness, Goldberg is extra careful when it comes to observing social distancing and wearing face masks.
When asked about how she was coping with lockdown, the co-host of The View said she liked it. “I like it, but that’s because I’m anti-social,” she said.
Whoopi Goldberg says she has bad days and wants to ‘scream’
However, like a lot of people, she said she has bad days: “There are days when I just want to kick the heck out of my pillows, I just want to kick things, stomp around and scream outside, and I do.”
“Because there’s no point in pretending I don’t feel like that. I feel like you have to acknowledge, ‘Yeah, this isn’t easy, this isn’t fun,'” she concluded.
Goldberg has been co-hosting The View from her home
ABCs The View has been broadcast remotely ever since the pandemic escalated, which has enabled Goldberg to work from home. She said that they initially tried to work from the studio, but as it got more and more difficult, the network suggested they work from home.
At the beginning of the crisis, her 77-year-old co-host Joy Behar — at the suggestion of her daughter — made the early decision to self-isolate herself at home as a precaution.
Yesterday movie director Martin Scorsese discussed his experiences of lockdown when he described feeling emotions of both anxiety and relief.
Meanwhile, star and co-creator of Schitt’s Creek, Dan Levy, took to Instagram this week to urge his fans to wear face masks. He asked those who see wearing face masks as an infringement on their rights of freedom to reframe as “an act of kindness” to those more vulnerable to COVID-19.