Jeff Bridges did a video for a covid prevention treatment that gave me goosebumps. I’m so happy and grateful that this incredible man survived both lymphoma and covid. I’m not blowing smoke – he’s a national treasure and we need to do the most to give him his flowers and appreciate that he’s still with us. The four minute video, below, is technically an ad for AstraZeneca’s “Long-Acting Monoclonal Antibody Therapy” which is designed to prevent severe covid in immunocompromised people. The ad is incredibly well done and moving, with Bridges moving through a forest and talking about his health journey and the gratitude he has for his family. Yahoo! transcribed some of what he said and here’s part of their writeup.
“I love being alive, man. And I got very close to losing it all,” Bridges says in the new PSA.
[He] knew something was wrong two years ago when he was exercising and felt like he had an extra “bone” in his stomach. It turned out to be a 9 by 12 inch tumor in his abdomen.
“There was no pain and it turns out I had lymphoma,” he explains.
While Bridges underwent chemotherapy, he contracted COVID-19 at the treatment center.
“It turns out that COVID made my cancer look like a piece of cake. So it knocked me out. It was a bizarre experience,” the actor recalls. “In times like that where you’re close to death man, I mean they didn’t know if I was going to make it a lot of times.”
Near death, Bridges “realized how dear and how important the intimacy” is with his family. The actor’s goal was to walk his daughter, Hayley, down the aisle. He accomplished that last year. Bridges not only survived COVID, but was told in 2021 his cancer was in remission.
“Not everybody understands what immunocompromised people are going through right now,” he shares.
Part of the actor’s treatment was undergoing long-acting monoclonal antibody therapy at his doctor’s suggestion. The extra layer of protection seemed to work when his wife came down with the coronavirus.
“I’m in the house with her, but I didn’t get it,” he notes.
Kumail Nanjiani is also part of this campaign with his wife, Emily V. Gordon. Hopefully we’ll get a video from them soon. Getting back to Bridges, it was sweet when he said that he worked hard to be able to walk his daughter down the aisle. You could tell that he was fighting to be with his family. It’s excellent that there’s an effective treatment available for immunocompromised people, I just hope it’s accessible. My son had covid a couple of months ago, we were still living together at the time and I didn’t catch it because we wore a mask around each other. Masks work incredibly well.
I was very glad to see that Bridges did a PSA for EVUSHELD. I received my injections about a week and a half ago. This PSA is needed because there is a lot of confusion about what EVUSHELD is and even more so how to get it. It has been available since last December and I had been languishing on a waiting list since then at a local teaching hospital, along with over 10,000 other people! I finally called the county health authority and was informed that hospitals all over the country get doses periodically, the up-to+date info is available online, and you just need to have your doctor send a prescription to a hospital (my local hospital administered the injections in the infusion center) that currently has a supply to get the injections. So glad I did not have to continue to wait on that huge, long waiting list. Word needs to get out about what EVUSHELD is and how people that need it can get it.
Masks do work. My son and I had it but my husband and daughter didn’t catch it…. we all wore masks until him and I tested negative.
They absolutely do. I had it over Labor Day weekend and between me isolating for 10 days from symptom onset and wearing masks in the rare instances where I couldn’t avoid being out in the house, nobody else in my house got it. We did the same when my son came home from camp with COVID this summer and thankfully contained it, then, too.
I am a healthy 45 year-old and it knocked me on my a$$ even being vaxxed and boosted. I am just now, two weeks+ from when I initially tested positive, feeling “normal” again and I had a very mild case. I can’t imagine the seriousness of fighting COVID while undergoing chemo. I’m so glad Jeff was able to pull through and that he is still here with us.
I really wish that masking hadn’t gotten politicized at the outset, because it is the single best way to stop the spread of this disease, which can have dire consequences for the elderly and immunocompromised. It’s such a simple and loving thing to do, and idiots will resist it because the GOP wants to “own the libs” and score points. Depressing.
The Dude abides.
I’m so happy that he does.
I’m so happy for the Dude. I had no idea what he’d been through.
Masks really, really do work! Go masks!
The monoclonal antibody treatment is good stuff, but it’s not available to enough people yet. I believe this is due to supply chain issues and there is just not enough medication right now. I could be wrong but my work does this treatment and not everyone who wants it/has it ordered gets it. We have another COVID treatment specifically for cancer patients called Evusheld that’s even more restrictive because we run out of that medication.
This is a great ad and Jeff Bridges is the perfect person for this because The Dude is for sure a national treasure. I hope this increases the availability.
I constantly wore a mask and distanced hand washing etc all the time. Also vaccinated. I got covid anyway, so to be honest I really don’t know if masks work incredibly well or not. I am still dealing with long covid and chronic bronchitis as result, I just feel we really don’t know enough about covid to come to any real conclusions about it.