Debi Mazar had the coronavirus. She was never able to get tested for it, but she had all of the symptoms and she was sick as a dog for a month. She was one of the first celebrities to come out and talk about how sick she was, right around the time when America was going on lockdown. Debi chatted with Entertainment Tonight this week to give us an update on her situation, and she brought up some very real concerns a lot of people have, including medical professionals: the reality that no one knows if people who had the virus can catch it again, and that no one knows when or if we’ll get a vaccine.
Debi Mazar is on the up and up. ET’s Katie Krause chatted with the Younger star via video chat, where she gave an update on her health status after testing positive for the coronavirus last month. Mazar shared that she’s been feeling better after having “every symptom that you’ve read about,” including the loss of taste and smell. However, she believes that she is COVID-19-free, even though she’s not able to get tested.
“I live in New York and you can’t get tested here anymore. Tests are not available even though they say they are, they’re not,” she told ET. “They won’t be giving me a COVID test. I don’t have any symptoms.” Amid her recovery, Mazar has been taking all types of supplements, “immune boosters like zinc and oregano oil.” “I got Chinese medicine that they were using a lot in China to help people recover,” she shared.
The actress is not worried about getting the virus again, but does believe that she “could definitely get it again in the fall. I’m hoping I don’t get it again before they get the vaccine,” she said, adding, “but your body develops immunities. So I think I’m better off than someone who hasn’t had it.”
Thankfully, she said, her husband, Gabriele Corcos, and their two kids are all doing well. “They stopped having any symptoms like at the end of February. So they’re healthy and strong.”
Mazar, meanwhile, has gotten used to quarantining — but her gray hairs, not so much. “I don’t love it. I mean, I’m forced to embrace [the gray],” she said about her salt and pepper hair. “I don’t know if you can see here, but it’s really coming in. I’m letting it go because I think it’s really good to give your hair a break.”
I’m not trying to be a conspiracist or anything, but it’s absolutely f–king bonkers to me that the virus has been around since last November/December and we still don’t know SO MUCH about it. We still don’t know if people can get it again. We don’t know how many mutations there are around the world, and if people can catch one mutated virus in March and another mutated version in September. We don’t know if having the virus once will help if you catch it again. We don’t know when there will be a vaccine or even if a vaccine will work. We don’t know which supplementals, vitamins and home-remedies really help. We don’t know when tests will be widely available in America. We don’t know why the virus affects some people in such a deathly way and why so many people are asymptomatic. It’s f–king crazy, right?
Photos courtesy of WENN, Instagram.
Honestly, I think it’s already mutating as time marches on. Younger people are dying from horrific strokes (the kind expected in the twilight years). Crazy rashes are popping up. In other words, people are being admitted for strange conditions, then discovering they’re covid positive. I’m starting to think this is going to be around for a long time.
I had heard one theory floated around that men are having the more severe version because women’s immune systems are just wired a bit different because we need to be able to not attack a fetus as a foreign invader. Not sure how accurate that actually is, but I did find it interesting.
The scary thing is now that they’re really tracking it there are more and more cases that happened sooner than anyone thought possible, but it seemed to be more mild. I know a LOT of people at work got really sick in between late December – early February. Worse than the normal seasonal illnesses we’re used to seeing circulate around the call center. I remember just feeling exhausted (but I have chronic illness and that’s a normal thing for me) and unwell. I remember thinking ‘wtf kind of cold is this?’ because it was just weird. Now I doubt we had covid, but who knows at this point. I know there were a lot of upper management flying in from Florida during that time frame, so I mean, it’s not completely impossible I guess.
Every time I see Debi I get this visceral reaction because of how much I hated her character on Bethoven’s Second haha. I remember thinking that there was a genuine chance that some lady could come steal my non-existent dog because that’s the kind of thing a little kid would think haha. The movie came out when I was 3, so I was probably around 5 or 6 when I watched it, but that’s 100% how I will always associate her. And she’s a great character actor, so I feel bad for that lol.
Love her in Younger.
It’s not being conspiracist to be frustrated that there is so little that we still know. Despite the current administration’s underfunding and mismanagement, and our “USA! USA!” hubris (we think we are the best at everything, when we are often not) – we have AMAZING scientists and engineers and laboratories. It’s crazy to me that we have made so little progress despite this. I have close friends who are doctors and I sent them these exact questions recently: “Is this disease unusual and unpredictable? Or is the media unfamiliar with disease transmission and symptoms? Or has there just not been enough time to figure it out?”
I haven’t heard back. Guess they’re busy… 🙂
I know it’s frustrating that we don’t have as much knowledge as we would like about this virus. But scientific studies unfortunately take time and this lag is not unusual. I’d love to hear from any scientists who have thoughts about this.
The good news, the more it mutates, the weaker it gets. I think they will have vaccine this fall.
Reg-
Mutations do not always weaken the virus – please don’t spread misinformation.
100% not true.
It’s from the same family of viruses as the common cold. Rapid and varied mutation is one of the hallmarks of coronaviruses, which is why you can catch a new cold just after you had one. There are many strains in the population at any one time, and they mutate from season to season. That’s also what makes it difficult to develop a vaccine.
I think it’s likely that Covid-19 will mutate into both more and less serious strains over time, and will probably become ingrained in our population the same way the common cold is. Most likely this will be a less severe strain, because that’s the strain that will be able to spread without triggering quarantines. How many people have had the virus asymptomatically, or with only vague, minor symptoms? We’ll probably never know, because how many of us realistically are going to have access to antibody testing? That’s the strain of the virus that will become embedded. Every few years will throw up a more severe strain, the same as happens now with influenza.
I absolutely believe the virus was here as early as November. Too many people between December-February that I know got really sick with flu-like symptoms that weren’t the flu.
I love her and that you are covering her. She’s always been interesting and candid.
She did get tested for it…. that’s how she knew she had it. She talks about it in her videos.
It’s not crazy we don’t know more after six months. Six months is an incredibly short time in terms of medical advances, hardly enough time to even get any studies done. It’s actually shocking how much we DO know in that time. The virus was identified, it’s genome mapped, doctors and scientists have figured out the mechanism by which it attacks the body, vaccines are already on human trials.
A former coworker of mine posted something on fb that she was super sick back in December and recently got an antibody test and it was positive. I have another friend that had pneumonia in early January and said she’s still not 100% lung capacity-wise. (These were both in Arizona.)
While I know this is obviously serious, it frustrates me that the death rate is still being reported as super high when it’s clearly been here for a long time and there are likely a lot of people that have had it and recovered. We really need to do widespread testing for both current infections and antibody tests so we can get a full picture of what the situation truly is.
My anxiety is sky high bc I just don’t trust our administration to really advocate for us or do the right thing. I live in Michigan now so I’m dealing with the very restrictive end of the spectrum, and parts of that are frustrating, but I’d MUCH rather that vs other states that aren’t taking it seriously.