DJ Jazzy Jeff says he has COVID-19, can’t get tested
LOS ANGELES (CNN/Meredith) — Grammy-winner DJ Jazzy Jeff says he’s suffering from COVID-19.
The recording artist thinks he contracted the virus while DJ-ing in Idaho. But he can’t get tested and now says he is terrified to leave the house.
Fly in, spin some music and create memories, that’s what the musician does.
“My whole life is playing for people in large crowds,” he said.
But when the famed turntablist left Ketchum in Idaho’s Sun Valley, he may have brought something with him from the skier’s paradise: the novel coronavirus.
“It spiraled downhill extremely fast,” he said. “I lost my sense of smell. I lost my sense of taste. … I started hallucinating.”
That was in early March, before the lockdowns, before most realized the outbreak was already spreading in the US.
Less than a week after his return home, it hit him while in the store with his wife Lynette.
“I looked at her and I said, you know what? I don’t feel well,” he said. “I can honestly say I had one or two times that my brain started going down a dark path. I cannot believe this is how I’m going to go out.”
He said he was never tested for the coronavirus.
“There was no doubt in my mind that I had COVID,” he said. “It was just trying to figure out where. I never thought Ketchum.”
DJ Jazzy Jeff’s Sun Valley Party on March 6 was open to all. Among those who attended were members of the national brotherhood of skiers.
“When I walked off stage, I might have given 3 high-fives before I went to the dressing room,” he said.
By week’s end, people headed out, all over the country and even abroad, the local health department said.
Eventually, Jeff’s wife got sick, and then her mother fell ill.
“Now I’m feeling absolutely terrible, who else did I get sick?,” Jeff said.
His family have all recovered, but sadly that’s not the case for the brotherhood.
Several of them, including Haymon Jahi and Charles Jackson Jr., died of COVID-19.
Dr. Broderick Franklin, an emergency medicine physician in Los Angeles, was also in Sun Valley for the ski summit.
“Within a week after I returned from the trip, at least 4 people who I knew personally … tested positive,” he said.
While he never developed symptoms, Dr. Franklin did test positive for antibodies for the virus.
“It absolutely changed the way I looked at a patient’s presentation,” he said.
He said Jazzy Jeff’s case highlights that more virus and antibody testing remains key.
The DJ also wants the antibody test, if he can get over his fear.
“I am absolutely terrified to go out of the house,” he said. “Because you know, the unknown if you can get it again, the unknown, if I’m still carrying.”
From early on, performing with Will Smith AKA The Fresh Prince in the mid-80s, DJ Jazzy Jeff has traveled the world to rock people.
He says these new developments change how he sees his future.
“But the funny thing is I don’t think its just my future, I believe that 60% of this is our new norm,” he said.
Photo Credit: kmov.com