Tool’s Maynard “All Good” After Contracting Covid-19 Twice
This past October, Tool and Puscifer frontman Maynard James Keenan revealed that he’d contracted Covid-19 last February, early in the pandemic, when the band was touring Australia and New Zealand. At the time of the revelation, Keenan said that he was “still dealing with the residual effects” which included “lung damage.”
Then, this most recent February, Keenan said that he became reinfected in “mid-November and ended up in the ER on December 1.” He explained of the experience, “Couldn’t breathe. I could barely put two words together without going into a coughing fit that, you know? It ended up kind of also progressing into pneumonia.” He remained hospitalized for several days.
Thankfully, Maynard says he’s finally on the mend, telling Loudwire in a recent interview that he’s “all good” when asked about his recovery. While reinfection with Covid is rare, it can happen… so be careful out there, people, even if you have antibodies from a prior infection!
Last October, Keenan went on The Joe Rogan Experience and spoke about the long-term effects he was experiencing from his first bout of Covid. He said:
“I’m starting to do the Muay Thai, I’m like, ‘dude, this hurts’ like, I’ve never, my hands have never hurt this bad. I thought maybe I sprained them because right after I recovered in New Zealand. I went and trained in New Zealand, thinking, I’m just gonna fucking gut it out, you know, I’m gonna walk it off, rub some dirt on it and I felt okay then.
“But when I finally got to Maui, I’m like, this is not right. This hurts I can’t fucking do this. I thought well maybe I sprained my wrist, so months go by that they’re not healing, I’m going through harvest [at his winery] at this point and like nothing’s [changing] they’re not healing.
“But I finally went to a doctor, an arthritis doctor, and he was like ‘okay so walk me through when you first saw…’ And I started walking him through everything he goes, ‘you had COVID.’ And what what are some of the side effects that you find are the are that inflammation.
“So whatever I guess so it’s some kind of a rheumatoid response. That alone would be well maybe, I’m just 56 and I have arthritis, but my blood work was completely clean everywhere else no other issues anywhere else in my body but just the wrists, explaining that, but I still have the cough.
“So whatever cough I had whatever cough I got in New Zealand, like every other day, I’ll have a coughing fit for, you know, for 10 minutes, coughing up stuff, so I have lung damage from from it still.”
Keenan recently released a short film, which he shot and narrated himself, called An Easter Story. The seven-minute clip ruminates on the recent passage of Easter and the Vernal Equinox (start of spring) and the historical significance of those events, tied in with the behavior of the ducks Maynard raises on his own farm and vineyard in Arizona. You can watch it here.
