[imagesource: Mario Tama/Getty Images]

It’s been a long week, and we are approaching the joy of a three-day weekend.

Let’s get this point down to avoid argument – getting vaccinated is a personal choice.

I have my own feelings about protecting one another and making decisions for the greater good, but let’s leave that for another day.

We ran through your chances of getting COVID-19 after being vaccinated yesterday, as well as highlighting the effectiveness of vaccines in reducing your chances of being hospitalised or dying.

Take for example Dr. Marc Mendelson, who says that he has not seen a single vaccinated person in his high care ward at Groote Schuur Hospital.

Around the world, hospital staff are relaying stories of last-minute regret at not getting vaccinated, with new headlines every day.

I’ll just provide a brief snapshot here and you can click through if you want to read more on each.

The New York Times:

As Mindy Greene spent another day in the Covid intensive care unit, listening to the whirring machines that now breathed for her 42-year-old husband, Russ, she opened her phone and tapped out a message…

Her husband, the father to their four children, was now hovering between life and death, tentacles of tubes spilling from his body. The patient in the room next to her husband’s had died hours earlier. That day, July 13, Ms. Greene decided to add her voice to an unlikely group of people speaking out in the polarized national debate over vaccination: the remorseful.

“If I had the information I have today, we would have gotten vaccinated,” Ms. Greene wrote. Come what may, she hit “send.”

VICE:

Since he was admitted to the hospital, [Travis] Campbell has been posting videos to Facebook nearly every day documenting his illness—and begging people to get the vaccine. Campbell was unvaccinated.

The people “pushing opinions and agendas are nowhere to be seen while you lay here gasping for your last breath like a fish out of water,” he told VICE News in a Facebook message Thursday.

You can watch his latest video here.

The BBC:

A man who died with Covid after refusing to be vaccinated made a “terrible mistake” which put his family at risk, his partner has said.

Leslie Lawrenson, 58, died at his home in Bournemouth, Dorset, on 2 July.

His partner Amanda Mitchell, 56, who was seriously ill with Covid at the same time, said he thought the vaccines were too “experimental”.

She told the Stephen Nolan programme on BBC Radio 5 live: “I feel incredibly foolish. Les died unnecessarily.”

The Washington Post:

These days, Christy Carpenter finds strength in her family and faith. But on some days, one question keeps ringing in her head: “Why?”

After weeks of battling through oxygen treatments, her 28-year-old son died in the hospital two months after being diagnosed with covid-19.

Now in Carpenter’s Alabama home, the room belonging to Curt [above left], her “beautiful baby boy” and firstborn, remains empty — a painful reminder of a life that could have been saved if the family had decided to get vaccinated, she said.

The Guardian:

A “fit and healthy” 42-year-old who loved climbing mountains and lifting weights has died of Covid-19 after refusing to get vaccinated, leaving his twin sister and mother heartbroken…

…he was left in intensive care after catching coronavirus, and told his consultant before he was ventilated that he wished he had been vaccinated. His twin said his death was “a tragedy”.

“He thought if he contracted Covid-19 he would be OK. He thought he would have a mild illness. He didn’t want to put a vaccine in his body. His was pumped full of every drug in the hospital. They threw everything at him,” McCann said on Twitter.

You’re allowed to have concerns regarding the COVID-19 vaccine, but remember that these stories above are not unverified screenshots passed around on social media or WhatsApp, talking about a friend of a friend.

These are real people, sharing their stories so that others won’t experience the pain and suffering they have.

Again, The Guardian:

[Dr Samantha] Batt-Rawden said it was difficult to witness the look of regret on patient’s faces when they became very unwell and needed to go on a ventilator. “You can see it dawn on them that they potentially made the biggest mistake of their lives [in not getting the vaccine], which is really hard,” she said, adding that she had overheard people telling family members about their remorse…

Glenn Barratt passed away in the Diana, Princess of Wales hospital in Grimsby after fighting coronavirus for weeks. The 51-year-old, from Cleethorpes, had opted not to have the vaccine. But his final words to bedside nurses and doctors were: “I wish I had.”

One more time, from The Guardian:

On Monday, a doctor in a Birmingham, Alabama, hospital, Brytney Cobia, said that all but one of her Covid patients at Grandview medical center didn’t receive the vaccine, with the one who had expected to make a full recovery after receiving oxygen, she told the Birmingham News. Several others are dying…

“One of the last things they do before they’re intubated is beg me for the vaccine. I hold their hand and tell them that I’m sorry, but it’s too late,” she added, referring to patients who have to be put on a ventilator.

Some US politicians or TV personalities have spent months publicly questioning the safety and efficacy of vaccines, even though they were quick to receive the vaccine themselves.

Speaking of politicians, here’s The Independent:

A GOP council member in Galveston County, Texas, has died from Covid just five days after he shared a meme on Facebook challenging the effectiveness of vaccines to fight deaths from the disease.

Scott Apley, 45, frequently challenged mask wearing and vaccinations on Facebook, and was a fierce conservative. He even went as far as describing himself as a “verified harmful extremist”.

Every life lost is sad, especially when a vaccine is available that has been proven to greatly reduce your chances of death.

Doctors and healthcare professionals, who have dedicated their lives to helping others, are hearing these stories time and time again.

That’s why they’re speaking out, and that’s why family members of those who have passed away are speaking out, too.

Years down the line, we will look back at the death toll, and the pushback against overwhelming medical and scientific evidence, and wonder how something so simple became so polarised.

[sources:nytimes&vice&bbc&washpost&guardian&guardian&guardian&independent]