Devo Frontman Mark Mothersbaugh Recalls Near-Fatal Battle with Coronavirus: 'It's Really Real'

Mark Mothersbaugh is opening up about his near-death experience with the novel coronavirus (COVID-19).

In a new interview with the Los Angeles Times, the Devo frontman, 70, shared details from his months-long battle with the coronavirus, which saw the musician hospitalized and placed on a ventilator.

After carefully social distancing, Mothersbaugh told the outlet he inadvertently came in contact with strangers and first noticed symptoms in May. His temperature registered at 103 degrees.

"A nurse came over the next morning and said, 'You should be in ICU.' I said, 'That's ridiculous.' She replied that she'd been a nurse for three decades: 'You need an ambulance right now,'" recalled the musician.

His wife Anita Greenspan — with whom he shares daughters Hui Hui, 19, and Margaret, 16 — told the outlet how quickly her husband's health declined: "It went from, 'I don't feel good' on Tuesday to an ambulance to Cedars on Saturday. It was terrifying."

The artist said at one point during his health battle, he thought he was approaching death's door — but his family's voices via phone helped him pull through.

"[There was] a time where I just felt exhausted. Like, 'I could just float down this river right now, and it would be really peaceful. It wouldn't be a freak-out. It wouldn't be something I'd be scared of. I could really just do that.' I really thought about it," he said to the Los Angeles Times.

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"And then it just happened that [Greenspan] called me, and she and the kids were on my phone, saying, 'You're getting out of there soon. Get off of that machine.' I don't know if everybody is lucky enough to have somebody do that for them."

Mothersbaugh added in the interview, "If you have anyone that you know who's in ICU with COVID, contact them and keep them in touch with the outside world, because it's easy to lose track of where you are and why you are. I had no idea I was on a ventilator for 10 days. Time meant nothing."

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Now on the mend and back with his family, the composer stressed to the Los Angeles Times the importance of social distancing, wearing masks and following public health guidelines to slow the spread of the coronavirus.

"Everything's become more devolved than I would have imagined possible," he said. "For anybody that's doubting whether the coronavirus and COVID-19 is real, it's really real."

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