Take It From Them: Americans Hospitalized With Covid Regret Not Getting the Vaccine Covid-19 case rates are spiking as the Delta variant spreads through the nation. Several with severe cases are imploring others to learn from their mistake and get inoculated https://www.rollingstone.com/politi...hospitalizations-unvaccinated-regret-1206032/ Conservative radio host Phil Valentine spent months preaching vaccine skepticism to his followers in Nashville. It seems like many of them listened. Tennessee has experienced a dramatic spike in the Covid-19 cases as the Delta variant has swept the nation, with the case rate ballooning over 220 percent over the past two weeks, according to The New York Times. Among the newly infected is Valentine. Valentine’s station, 99.7 WTN, announced on Friday that the host contracted Covid and that he is in “serious condition” in the critical care unit. The experience has led Valentine to reconsider his stance on the vaccine. “If he had to do it over again, he would be more adamantly pro-vaccination, and that is what he will bring in his message when he gets back to that microphone which we hope is sooner rather than later,” his brother Mark recently told News4 Nashville. Valentine’s hospitalization is another needless tragedy in a pandemic that should have been all but snuffed out months ago. Thankfully, he’s had plenty of support. Since the announcement last week, friends and fans have expressed their well wishes on Twitter, and his family has kept followers updated on Facebook. “Phil & his family would like for all of you to know that he loves ya’ll and appreciates your concern, thoughts & prayers more than you will ever know,” 99.7 posted July 22nd. “Please continue to pray for his recovery and PLEASE GO GET VACCINATED!” If and when Valentine recovers, he would do well to work to undo some of the damage he has done. This would include apologizing to the people whom he told were “probably safer not getting [the vaccine],” as he wrote in a December blog post. Valentine also parodied the Beatles “Taxman” with “Vaxman,” singing: “Let me tell you how it will be / And I don’t care if you agree / ‘Cause I’m the Vaxman / Yeah, I’m the Vaxman / If you don’t like me coming round / Be thankful I don’t hold you down.” The degree to which right-wing influencers like Valentine are responsible for the vaccine hesitancy fueling the Covid resurgence can’t be overstated. Local radio hosts, cable news talking heads, and Republicans in Congress have duped tens of millions of Americans into failing to protect themselves and others from the disease. These unvaccinated millions are now coming down with severe cases of Covid at an alarming rate. Like Valentine, many of them are expressing regret that they neglected to get the vaccine. There are plenty of Americans who are unable to get vaccinated, such as children, but even more have willfully abstained amidst an onslaught of misinformation. Here are some recent reported examples of unvaccinated Americans and their families who were hospitalized with Covid and now regret forgoing the vaccine: Michael Freedy, a 38-year-old father of five from Las Vegas, died last Thursday morning from complications arising from Covid. He sent his finaceé Jessica DuPreeze a text message while he was in the hospital: “I should have gotten the damn vaccine.” DuPreeze told CNN on Monday that she and their eldest child got the vaccine the day Freedy was diagnosed, and that she thinks Freedy would still be alive if he’d been vaccinated. “It at least would have lessened the symptoms and he could have fought longer and had a better chance,” she said. Williams Hughes was hospitalized in Arkansas after coming down with Covid. He spoke with CNN on July 22nd with a breathing tube attached to his nose. “It’s made me wish that I’d gotten the vaccine,” he said. “The vaccine might not have kept me from getting Covid, but it may have decreased greatly the pain and suffering I had to go through to get the point where I am now.” Hughes concluded his appearance with a plea. “Please, just go get the vaccine,” he said, holding back tears. “If you don’t do it for yourself, do it for your family. Because I almost left my wife and my daughter here to fend for themselves because I didn’t go get one.” Aimee Matzen, 44, was hospitalized in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, after testing positive for Covid. Louisiana has the highest seven-day average of new cases per capita in the nation. “The fact that I am here now, I am furious with myself,” Matzen, who had been struggling to breathe, told CNN. “Because I was not vaccinated.” Daryl Barker, a 31-year-old from Missouri who was hospitalized after contracting Covid in early July, cited his conservative values as the reason he was “strongly” against getting the vaccine. “That little boy out there is the reason to have a vaccine,” he said, citing his son, who camped outside the hospital with Barker’s wife. “Being 31 years old, I’m that little boy’s hero. I’m supposed to be the strongest person he knows,” he Barker said, tubes protruding from his nose. “Right now he could come in here at take me.” Texas man Joshua Garza, 43, became so sick from Covid that he required a double lung transplant to survive. He declined to get vaccinated when he had a chance earlier in the year. “If I knew what I know now I would have definitely went through with the vaccination,” he said following the transplant in May. Kathy Kurilla died in May after spending a month in the hospital following a Covid diagnosis. Her husband of 29 years, Joe, spoke with CNN last week. Kurilla was not vaccinated (she came down with Covid at a time when the vaccine was not widely available), and Joe urged anyone hesitated to inoculate themselves to learn from his experience. “I wish I could have you sit there with me in the hospital room with my wife having the tubes up her nose and seeing seven different medications being pumped into her,” he said. “I think you would change your mind in a heartbeat.” The New York Times recently spoke to multiple families advocating for the vaccine after their unvaccinated loved ones were hospitalized with Covid. Utah woman Mindy Greene, whose 42-year-old husband Russ is currently hospitalized, says she prevented her family from getting vaccinated in part because of what she saw on social media. “I will always regret that I listened to the misinformation being put out there,” she said. “They’re creating fear.” The Covid case rate is rising dramatically among the unvaccinated, but the majority of those who have yet to get a shot still aren’t convinced. A recent Associated Press poll found that 35 percent of unvaccinated Americans say they will probably remain unvaccinated, while another 45 percent said they definitely will not get the shot. Despite evidence the vaccine offers strong protection against the Delta variant, 64 percent of unvaccinated Americans believe the vaccine does not offer protection against Covid variants. A Kaiser Health analysis of state data published last Friday found that the vast majority of Covid cases (between 94.1 and 99.85 percent), hospitalizations (between 95.02 and 99.93 percent), and deaths (between 96.91 and 99.91 percent) are among the unvaccinated. (More videos and media at above url)
Panic Porn form the media. As usual. Anything to get you to go get a vax that doesn't work for you (unless you're old and/or have complications - then you should absolutely vaccinate).
Yes.. an R factor of 9 is more contagious than smallpox or Ebola. This is just basic science that is understood by most rational people.
This is where you've just turned bat shit crazy in denial. Your theory on who should get vaccinated is absolute crap for several reasons.
Hospitalized Vaccine Skeptic Says He’s ‘Over the Stupid Conspiracies,’ Begs People to Have Shots https://www.thedailybeast.com/travi...iracies-begs-people-to-have-coronavirus-shots
A healthy Mississippi man brushed off the COVID-19 vaccine. Then, he tested positive https://www.clarionledger.com/story...sippi-man-partially-amputated-leg/5429163001/ Bryan Thompson's robot leg is coming in a few weeks. At least, that's what he tells his 6-year-old son, Endymion, who's too young to understand COVID-19 caused blood clots in Bryan's left leg and forced a partial amputation. In Endymion's eyes, if that's what his dad needs to maintain superhero status, that's what has to be done. That's who Bryan is for his family. Resilient and relentlessly optimistic. Bryan can make-believe about the robot leg to soothe his son's worries. He and his wife, Audrey Thompson, could laugh about it while they were cooped up on a green couch in a Baptist Medical Center hospital room. But the robot leg — a prosthetic — to help him walk on his left side again, will always be a reminder of how the COVID-19 delta variant ravaged his body and upended his reality in a single month. His leg without the prosthetic, unwrapped and healing, is rippled with surgical staples. It's Bryan's warning to whoever he can reach that he wished he'd been vaccinated. State health officials have said unvaccinated people are over 90% of new coronavirus infections. Despite the variant's highly contagious nature, federal health officials say vaccines are effective against severe illness that can be caused by the delta variant. Like the majority of Mississippians, the Thompsons didn't get vaccinated when they became eligible. They didn't think they'd be the vulnerable ones. And they initially held reservations about the speed in which the vaccines were produced. "We thought we were over the hump," Audrey said, referring to the dwindling cases from April to June before the July delta variant surge. Bryan, now writhing in pain from dressing changes back in his Gluckstadt home and weeks away from learning how to navigate a prosthetic, is urging the unvaccinated to get the shot. "It's not a political issue. Republican or Democrat, all you want to do is live," he said. "Stop being selfish and get your priorities straight and think about life." (More at above url)