Coronavirus

Tyson Fury has COVID-19 and his super fight with Deontay Wilder will almost certainly be postponed ... so says boxing insider Teddy Atlas.

Fury and Wilder are scheduled to fight July 24 ... their 3rd fight. The 1st was a draw ... and Fury KO'd Deontay in their 2nd bout in February 2020.

But, earlier today, rumors were swirling that someone in Fury's camp contracted the virus ... but it was unclear if that was accurate -- and if Tyson had the virus.

But, when Atlas joined the Wise Kracks Podcast with Bill Krackomberger and Jon Orlando ... he dropped some bombshell info.

“It looks like Fury actually has COVID. He had 1 shot. He didn't get both shots, both vaccines. And, it looks like he has the COVID,” Atlas says.

So, if Fury has COVID ... it seems all but a sure thing the trilogy fight will be postponed. There are rumors the trilogy fight could be moved to September ... but Teddy says he doesn't know if that's enough time.

“They're talking about pushing it back to September. I don't know if that's enough time.”

On Thursday, a Top Rank spokesperson -- Fury's promoter -- gave us the following statement.

“We continue to monitor the health status of Tyson and his team and the status of the event has not changed to date.”

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Juvenile's the first to admit he was skeptical when a dating app reached out about collaborating, but that faded when he heard the end goal was educating his community about the COVID-19 vaccine.

The New Orleans rapper joined "TMZ Live" Thursday and explained how and why the collaboration with the dating app BLK came together. He tells us he was all in soon after hearing the dating app's mission to get users vaccinated before going on dates.

Enter Juvenile's "Vax That Thang Up" ... a remix to his 1999 classic, and still a club banger, "Back That Thang Up." The rapper thought the remix was a brilliant idea.

Juvenile probably didn't need too much convincing considering the staggering numbers. Remember, early on during the vaccine roll out there was serious hesitancy and mistrust ... with only 14% of African-Americans trusting the vaccine is safe.

New figures also show COVID cases (18%) and hospitalization rates (11%) jumped exponentially among African-Americans in L.A. County alone between mid-May and mid-June.

But, while vaccination rates have gotten better among African-Americans ... misinformation looms, which leads to hesitancy. But, as Juvenile says, he hopes the remix calms fears -- and, in fact, he told us how it's already impacted someone close to him.

There will be no fans allowed to watch Olympians perform in-person at the Games this summer ... spectators have now been banned from the Tokyo Olympics due to COVID-19.

Japan's Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga just declared a state of emergency in Tokyo ... after people in the heavily populated area have seen a spike in coronavirus cases.

Suga said Thursday the state of emergency -- and the heavy restrictions that come with it -- will be in place through Aug. 22.

The Games are scheduled to run from July 23 to Aug. 8.

"The number of infected cases in the area including Tokyo has been increasing since the end of last month," Suga said.

"The number of severe cases and bed occupancy rate continues to be on the low level, but considering the impact of variants, we need to enhance countermeasures so that the infection will not spread nationwide."

The Tokyo Olympics had already been postponed from 2020 to 2021.

Olympics officials apologized Thursday to those who had tickets to the event.

"Girl you look good once you vax that thang up, you handsome young brother once you vax that thang up" ... yes that's Juvenile remixing his famous song for the COVID-19 vaccine.

The New Orleans rapper just dropped a vaccine remix to his 1999 classic, "Back That Thang Up" ... teaming up with Mannie Fresh and Mia X to give folks yet another reason to get their shots.

Juvenile's even got a music video for "Vax That Thang Up" as part of a collab with the dating app BLK, pushing vaccines as the safest way to have sex in the pandemic.

"Dating in real life, you need to vax that thang up, feeling freaky all night you need to vax that thang up" ... well said, Juvenile.

The music vid's fun, the message is great and the remix flows perfectly ... so bravo to all involved.

For his part, Juvenile says he wanted to do something positive for his community and to show how much he cares about protecting not only himself but also his family.

Swae Lee's jumping the gun with a COVID prognosis for the country ... proclaiming, during an indoor concert, the pandemic is effectively dunzo, but he might wanna slow his roll.

The Rae Sremmurd rapper was performing at Vendome Nightclub in Miami Monday night when he took a brief pause to celebrate what he perceives as the coronavirus being "officially over."

His rationale seems to be ... everyone is "outside" (of the home) and close together again, so there's no danger -- but the audience didn't appear to be fully buying what he was selling. Watch for yourself ... major mixed reactions.

Of course ... he oughta be cautious despite declining rates compared to, say, last year. Florida COVID cases are somewhat on the rise again with the Delta variant going around ... reports say they're actually #5 across the nation with the quickest spread of the virus.

Ever the showman, Swae didn't linger on the topic for too long -- pivoting to a performance of his and his brother's hit, "Black Beatles," and the crowd unanimously loved that.

In his defense ... while COVID-19 cases spiked around 42% just last week, vaccinated folks are largely not needing hospitalization. In other words, science is working.

Kate Middleton is in isolation after coming in contact with someone who tested positive for COVID.

Apparently, Kate interacted with someone last week who had the virus. According to British rules, people who come in contact with someone with COVID should self-isolate for 10 days.

It doesn't seem to have affected her health, at least so far. A Kensington Palace rep said, "Her Royal Highness is not experiencing any symptoms, but is following all relevant government guidelines and is self-isolating at home."

Here's how tricky this becomes ... Kate showed up at Wimbledon Friday and met with the staff at the All England Club kitchens. She also interacted with people as she ambled through the Wimbledon Lawn Tennis Museum.

She also attended the England Euro 2020 match at Wembley Stadium with Princes William and George on June 29.

Kate was vaccinated in May, so the worst-case scenario if she contracts COVID is probably flu-like symptoms.

Henry Winkler thinks the world needs to go through a "cataclysmic event" to help bring people together since we're so dang divided -- but his idea is getting a big fat ... HUH?!?

The actor tweeted out the controversial sentiment Sunday, seemingly out of nowhere and without much context. He wrote ... "We are So divided as a country .. only a cataclysmic Event , that makes us depend on one another again , can bring us back together."

Like we said ... not a whole lot of info here to get a sense of what Henry's talking about exactly -- but it could be anything ... frankly, we ARE quite divided these days -- from politics to just about everything else.

With that said ... his call for a big boom moment is being called insensitive, tone-deaf and weirdly out of touch -- especially since we, you know, just went through (and are still going through) a worldwide pandemic ... which you would think fits HW's criteria for this.

People obviously pointed this out to Henry, and he received the message ... but responded somewhat cryptically, writing ... "The Pandemic pushed the world inside creating a world apart." What we think he's saying is ... this pandemic isn't the catastrophe he had in mind -- if anything, he seems to believe COVID has only pushed us further apart.

Pet owners might be able to rest easy soon now that a COVID-19 vaccine seems to be making its way to the animal kingdom ... as it's getting a mass trial run at a California zoo.

Oakland Zoo officials announced this week that they had received a substantial shipment of the experimental 'rona jab manufactured by pharmaceutical company Zoetis ... which presumably cooked their recipe up specifically for wild creatures, across the board.

We say that because OZ says it's already administered the vaccine to a good portion of their furry friends ... including their lions, tigers, bears and ferrets. Oh my, indeed!

The zoo was one of the first recipients of 11,000 doses Zoetis made (and tested) ... and apparently, more are being rolled out to other animal facilities in the coming weeks. This is a donation, BTW -- for this time around at least -- so very generous on Zoetis' part.

The USDA has said this vaccine -- which was reportedly first tested out on minks -- can be used on a case-by-case basis ... but it clearly works to a high degree, because Oakland is straight-up inoculating their animals seemingly en masse. It's unclear if more animal types will be included at some point -- but ya gotta figure they will be if the trial run goes well.

This is big news ... not just because different animals at zoos have contracted the virus -- including tigers and primates at places like the SD Zoo (which got a small shipment of Zoetis earlier this year to test on the latter) -- but it could have ramifications for dogs/cats.

The unveiling of a Princess Diana statue at Kensington Palace should be cause for a royal celebration, but instead, the tension leading up to the event between Prince William and Prince Harry caused it to be a much smaller, somber affair ... so claims a famous photographer.

If you hadn't heard ... Diana would have turned 60 today, and her 2 sons just unveiled a statue in her honor in the gardens of Diana's home ... the home where Harry and Meghan Markle announced their engagement.

The ceremony was originally planned as a large gathering, but the royal brothers recently decided to cut the guest list down to a handful of close relatives ... blaming the change on renewed COVID concerns.

But, Arthur Edwards, Royal Photographer for "The Sun," is calling BS -- he says the ongoing friction between the princes is the real reason for the scaled-down event.

Edwards says the garden area is quite large, so if they wanted to have a nice-sized crowd that could still socially distance ... they could have easily figured that out.

The photog points out that 40,000 people were packed into Wembley Stadium recently to watch England beat Germany in the Euro ... so he says it's sad so many people who were close to Diana -- including Queen Elizabeth II, Prince Charles and Edwards himself -- can't attend the unveiling.

Elton John reportedly was also axed from the guest list ... but there are plans for a later tribute for Diana in September.

Chris Kattan allegedly pulled an anti-masker moment onboard an American Airlines flight, frightening other passengers and prompting airline staff to order him off the plane ... TMZ has learned.

Sources with direct knowledge tell us ... the ex-'SNL' star had boarded the flight Monday from Dallas/Fort Worth to LAX, but his appearance startled several passengers who were seated near him in first class.

We're told Chris was stumbling and seemed sick, at least to other passengers ... partially because he had mucous hanging out of his nose when he leaned over. He was not wearing a mask at that point, and we're told passengers alerted flight attendants ... who brought him paper towels and ordered him to put on a mask.

We're told Chris did put one on -- the federal mask mandate is still in effect for air travel -- but left it below his nose ... and by now his behavior had other passengers on edge. Witnesses say he begged flight attendants not to boot him, and even asked if they'd seen him on 'SNL.'

Staffers asked him multiple times to pull up his mask, and warned if he didn't do it immediately their next call would be to the cops. At that point, he finally got up and left.

We've made calls to Kattan's team to get his side of the story, but so far ... no word back.

Yungblud took to the stage this week for a momentous event since the pandemic began -- welcoming back concertgoers (in-person) ... who came flocking in, mostly without masks.

The rocker held his first public show at WeHo's Whisky a Go Go, which was packed to the gills with folks dying to get out and catch some tunes up close and in the flesh. It's all kosher, obviously -- the state of California is open again, and masks are largely optional.

However, it's interesting to see that the majority of people here chose not to wear a face covering ... especially because we've heard it was all basically on an honor system in terms of vaccination. We've heard from people who went that there were no vaxx card checks ... so it's a little dicey. Some may have been vaccinated, others easily might not have been.

That might make you squirm a bit when you see just how huddled and close people got during the performance -- especially when Yungblud got down low to the ground level.

At this point, it appears enough people are getting vaccinated that these people felt comfortable enough to take the chance ... to which we say, rage at your own risk. Word around town is that a lot of these smaller venues aren't checking vaccine status, so ... 🤷🏽‍♂️

BTW, Machine Gun Kelly and Megan Fox were in attendance for this shindig -- they're pals with Yungblud -- and of course, they were doing their thing up in the upper deck ... making out and stuff.

President Trump allegedly had a radical idea about how to deal with Americans in Asia who had contracted the coronavirus in the early pandemic days -- don't bring them home, send them to Guantanamo Bay.

That's what the ex-Prez is accused of in a new book written by a pair of Washington Post journalists based on interviews with more than 180 people with knowledge of Trump's response to COVID-19 ... including senior White House staff and health leaders.

According to the book ... as Trump's team debated bringing infected Americans home to receive care, he instead suggested the infamous U.S. military prison in Cuba.

Trump reportedly asked those in the Situation Room in Feb. 2020, "Don't we have an island that we own? What about Guantanamo?" The book alleges Trump then made a comment about how America imports goods -- not viruses -- and claims he didn't want to increase COVID numbers on U.S. soil.

The President's aides shot down the idea after Trump suggested it a second time, citing concern for how it would look for American tourists to be quarantined at the same place where the country holds terrorism suspects ... according to the book.

"Hi, I'm Cole Beasley and I'm not vaccinated! I will be outside doing what I do. I'll be out in the public. If you're scared of me then steer clear or get vaccinated. Point. Blank. Period."

Buffalo Bills wide receiver Cole Beasley just went on a passionate rant on his decision to NOT get vaccinated -- not now, not EVER -- saying, "I may die of COVID, but I'd rather die actually living."

The 32-year-old has been going OFF on Twitter over the past 2 days ... calling out the NFL Players Association over new protocols for unvaccinated players during preseason.

Long story short -- vaccinated players will pretty much be able to go back to normal, while unvaccinated will still be required to wear masks and stay at the team hotel ... among other restrictions at team facilities.

While folks have raised the question -- why not just get vaccinated? -- Beasley makes it clear that's not an option ... and will sacrifice whatever it takes to stick to his beliefs.

"I don't play for the money anymore," he added. "My family has been taken care of. Fine me if you want. My way of living and my values are more important to me than a dollar."

"I'm not going to take meds for a leg that isn't broken. I'd rather take my chances with COVID and build my immunity that way."

"Eat better. Drink water. Exercise and do what I think is necessary to be a healthy individual. That is MY CHOICE based on MY experiences and what I think is best."

Beasley says if he's forced to walk away from football over his stance, he'll welcome it with open arms and make up for all the time he's missed with his family over the years.

But, Beasley says he's not alone -- he claims a lot of other guys in the league feel the same way ... he's just not afraid to say it.

A Foo Fighters concert was swarming with more than just fans, with a protest against the show's vaccine rules raging on outside the venue while the band raged on inside.

Anti-vaxxers showed up Tuesday night to the Canyon Club in the San Fernando Valley where they protested the Foo Fighters requiring vaccine proof in order to attend their show.

Several dozen protesters showed up, carrying signs that read "Foo Fighters fight to bring segregation back" as well as "event for vaccinated only, unvaccinated not allowed." Ricky Schroder -- who helped the Kenosha shooter post bail -- was also there, he's been very public in his stance against vaccines.

One protester reportedly said, "And what they’re doing is saying only vax people, separating humans is not OK. Those of us who have healthy immune systems should be able to enjoy these freedoms just like everybody else."

Concertgoers were not thrilled to see the protesters. One person took to Twitter and said, "Some real low-quality humans at the @foofighters show in agoura hills CA tonight." Someone else wrote, "This is what happens when you just want to attend a @foofighters concert at a small local concert hall and the next thing out know you’re a ‘Vaccine Segregationist.'"

The concert -- considered to be California's first full-capacity show since the lockdown -- went on without a hitch ... FF played some of their biggest hits in the 20+ song set.

Heidi Ferrer -- a Hollywood writer known for her work on the hit WB series "Dawson's Creek" and ABC's "Wasteland" -- has died by suicide following a long battle with COVID-19 ... TMZ has confirmed.

A family member tells us Heidi took her own life after fighting covid for more than a year, she died on May 26.

She contracted the virus when the pandemic was raging in late April 2020, and her symptoms worsened month after month. She was bedridden a couple of months after she first fell ill ... suffering from severe fatigue and neurological tremors.

Heidi wrote a blog post back in September detailing exactly how COVID knocked her down -- she called the recovery process the hardest thing her body's ever had to go through.

She said, "In my darkest moments, I told my husband that if I didn’t get better, I did not want to live like this. I wasn’t suicidal, I just couldn’t see any quality of life long term and there was no end in sight."

Her condition went through a steady decline this year as she battled long-haul COVID symptoms -- and last month, more than a year after contracting the virus, she was bedridden again before her death. Nick called long-haul COVID "a public health crisis that must be addressed quickly."

Heidi made a name for herself as a writer who, without a college degree, sold her first spec, "The C Word," to Oscar-winning producer Arnold Kopelson. She remained a member of the Writer's Guild of America for 24 years.

Heidi's survived by her husband, 13-year-old son, mother and 2 sisters. She was 50.

Potentially devastating news for the Phoenix Suns -- superstar point guard Chris Paul has been sidelined for an indefinite period of time ... as part of the NBA's COVID-19 health and safety protocols.

In other words, CP3's status for the start of the Western Conference Finals is reportedly "up in the air" ... depending on when the Clippers/Jazz series ends, according to Shams Charania.

Paul has been the backbone for the red-hot Suns -- averaging 15.7 points, 4.1 rebounds and 8.7 assists through 10 games this postseason.

Phoenix has been on a tear in the playoffs ... eliminating LeBron James and the Los Angeles Lakers in the first round and sweeping the Denver Nuggets in the semifinals.

The Jazz vs. Clippers series is currently tied at 2 games apiece ... and if either team wins in 6, it sounds like Paul will not be ready to go.

The report adds if the series goes 7 games, the WCF will start after Sunday.

Shams also points out the isolation period may be shorter for vaccinated players -- depending on the medical circumstance -- but those details have not been revealed at this time.

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