Iggy Pop Removes Torso Section From Hazmat Suit

MIAMI — Proto-punk legend Iggy Pop removed the torso section from his hazmat suit yesterday, designed to protect the aging rocker from contracting COVID-19, concerned medical staff confirmed.

“I want to give back to my community and lift the spirits of all those suffering from this horrible disease,” the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall-of-Famer explained. “My manager said the only way they’d let me perform at a hospital is if I wear this hazmat suit. But how the hell would anyone know it’s really me? I cut out the torso section so they’d know the man singing ‘I Wanna Be Your Dog’ into their coughy, fever-filled faces was the real fucking deal.”

Pop’s management tried to convince him to stay home, but he refused.

“What are we supposed to do? This guy has done every drug on the planet like, 500 times and nothing stopped him. He’s not afraid of the virus at all,” said Iggy’s manager, Henry Howard. “You think the guy who kept teasing the idea of killing himself onstage cares about a global pandemic? I mean, we’ve told him many times it’s not a good idea, considering he’s in the high-risk age range, and he just keeps bringing up all the different times he should have died in the 70s.”

Security footage showed the 72-year-old walking out of the hospital in his hazmat suit, rolling a tank of nitrous oxide behind him.

“In a weird way, I’m glad he left, because he was just roaming the halls — singing, popping into rooms and squeezing IV bags, cutting up his chest with medical tools… and somehow he walked his way into the pharmacy before disappearing for a few hours,” said Dr. Donovan Proctor. “We were already against the whole idea in the first place, and now we have somebody who has been directly exposed to the virus just waltzing out there in the world. But I gotta admit, it was pretty cool when he launched into ‘Search and Destroy.’”

In related news, doctors scrambling to develop a coronavirus vaccine tried convincing Keith Richards to donate blood to see if whatever is keeping him alive was the cure.