Bat out of well(ness).
Howard Stern wants Meat Loaf’s family to speak out about COVID-19 vaccines — and believes the late singer got sucked into a “cult.”
The “Bat Out of Hell” singer died earlier this month at 74, reportedly of COVID-19. The late rocker had been vigorously opposed to masking and vaccine mandates.
In a recent interview last summer, Meat Loaf griped that masks are “useless. They don’t do anything. They don’t stop you from getting COVID. They’re just a nuisance and make your nose itch and make it so you can’t breathe.”
He added, “If I die, I die, but I’m not going to be controlled.”
Speaking out about the performer’s death, Stern, 68, railed: “Poor Meat Loaf got sucked into some weird f–king cult. And somehow really believed that — he made a statement, ‘I’d rather die a free man than take that vaccine.’ And now he’s dead!” reports Uproxx.
“I wish the family would come forward and say, ‘Ya know, when Meat Loaf was laying there in the hospital and he couldn’t breathe, he said, ‘I made a mistake,’” he continued.
“‘I should have taken the vaccine.’ Like all these anti-vaxxers, they all say, ‘I made a mistake.’”
The widow of Meat Loaf (né Marvin Lee Aday), Deborah Gillespie, issued a statement following his passing writing, “The grief I feel over the loss of my husband is gut-wrenching.” However, she didn’t specify how her husband of nearly 15 years died.
This isn’t the first time the self-proclaimed “King of All Media” has bashed anti-vaxxers.
Earlier this month, he went on a tirade about controversial tennis champ Novak Djokovic, who was thrown out of Australia after petitioning for an exemption to the country’s vaccination requirement for noncitizens.
“That f–k-nut … Djokovic. The Joker, I call him the Joker,” the shock jock fumed. “What a f–king a–hole.”
He continued, “The first I’ve heard of this guy is that he doesn’t want to get his vaccine and he’s running around … they should throw him right the f–k out of tennis.”
Stern was also critical of several radio hosts who have died of COVID-19 after waging campaigns against them.
“When are we going to stop putting up with the idiots in this country and just say, you know, ‘It’s mandatory to get vaccinated’?” Stern ranted on an episode of his Sirius XM show last September.
“F–k them, f–k their freedom. I want my freedom to live. I want to get out of the house already. I want to go next door and play chess. I want to go take some pictures.”