A friend (coworker) of my wife was just released from the hospital after 3 weeks in serious condition from covid. He is in his early 20's (a custodian at the middle school where they work). He is on portable oxygen and wants to come back to work on limited duty. He was not vaccinated because he was in a low risk category (healthy and young).Seeing I am a lab tech who has seen the effects of COVID and spent eight nights in the hospital I work at(six of them in ICU) I can say I highly recommend ppl getting the vaccine(s). We have had 3-4 ppl die with/or by COVID the last few days. AFAIK, none of them had been vaccinated. We have a six bed ICU(we are a smaller hospital that has ~ 90 beds but are staying in the 40’s-50’s right now, with 21 COVID patients as of Thursday morning) and we have five ICU beds with patients on vents, with one being non-COVID related, the other four are.
I drew blood from a 23 year old girl Wednesday night who was having COVID complications. She had gotten it last year and was reinfected recently, with her telling me this time it is worse. She also told me she hadn’t gotten the vaccines, either. Another gentleman age 37 came to the ER a little over a month ago. He and his wife had just came back from Florida on a Tuesday, tested positive Thursday, he was hospitalized for over a month, and spent 10-14 days on the vent. Other than finding out the night he came to the ER that he was a diabetic, he was healthy.
I was told a family of an ~ 2 year old child, her mother and grandmother all died from COVID. The person who told me this has been caught in some lies, so take that with a grain of salt until I can confirm this is true or not.
Ppl have EVERY RIGHT to take it or not, and they should NEVER be forced to take these vaccines. But I see them as armor. It doesn’t guarantee they won’t die in battle, but increases their chances they will survive.
We have to remember that statistics do not mater as much as people.
I agree that vaccines should not be forced (but depending on the employment I am not opposed to mandated vaccinations as a condition of employment... some fields need to take precautions).
Edit: I know my odds are better for surviving a car accident if I wear a seat belt. And I do. BUT I do not believe it should be illegal for me to drive without one (except on employer property where the employer mandates seat belts). I see the vaccines along similar lines.