Howard Stern finally left the house for the first time since the COVID outbreak began, and he’s still nervous about the experience.
The 68-year-old shock jock is also a self-proclaimed germaphobe, which made him more wary about COVID. He’s been hiding out in his “bunker” for the past two years.
Still, he was finally spotted with other celebrities, including Jennifer Aniston, Jimmy Kimmel, Jon Hamm, Justin Theroux, and Jason Bateman, at the restaurant Laser Wolf in Brooklyn’s Williamsburg neighborhood over the weekend. He was allegedly without a mask at the table.
Stern talked about going out for the first time in a long time on the Monday installment of his radio program, which he’s been doing from home all along.
“I really had an exhausting weekend, emotionally, physically,” he explained. “For the first time in two years I ventured out of the house.”
Overall, he said, “It was too much for me. It was too much. I haven’t been out in two years.”
Kimmel, according to Stern, has been pressing him to go out and mingle. He invited the radio presenter and his wife, Beth Ostrosky, who has been quarantined with him, to dinner. He refused to accompany her.
“I said to my wife, ‘I don’t want to go, I’m in a panic, I don’t want to get COVID,’” Stern told the audience. He and Ostrosky are both vaccinated, he said, but that didn’t affect his decision.
“I know our president has told us the pandemic is over and everyone is walking around without masks … I still just don’t want to get COVID.”
In the past, the self-proclaimed “King of All Media” quipped that everyone visiting his home had to be tested for COVID and, in any case, had to don hazmat suits. Kimmel told the newspaper that when he and his wife stayed with Stern for a few days during the summer, they had to show two negative tests.
The “Jimmy Kimmel Live” host said, “We’re worried that we’re going to lose you from society because the longer this goes on, the more comfortable you get in that little world. And then it’s harder and harder to get out of it … it’s unhealthy.”
“F* it, I’m being a p**, I know,” Stern agreed before saying dinner with friends was an option he’d consider.
“For me, [COVID] is still going on and I haven’t left my house. I can’t figure out how to integrate myself,” Stern said in November 2021. “I’ve been locked up so long and I haven’t gotten COVID. I’m afraid I’ll be the one a**hole who gets COVID and I’ll die. Even though people don’t seem to be dying that much [anymore].”