42-year-old fitness fanatic ‘struggling’ over decision not to get vaccinated in dying days, family said

• A 42-year-old Briton who loved to exercise and eat healthy died from COVID-19 last week.

• John Eyers did not get the vaccine because he “thought he would be fine,” his family said.

• The father-of-one told doctors in his dying days that he regretted his decision not to get the vaccine.

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An unvaccinated 42-year-old fitness fanatic who has regularly climbed mountains and participated in the Ironman has died of COVID-19, his family has said.

John Eyers, a construction expert and bodybuilding competitor from the seaside town of Southport, England, died last week, a month after catching the virus.

The father-of-one was a “healthy” and “very active” person who climbed mountains and camped in the wilderness just four weeks before he fell ill, his twin sister, Jenny McCann, said on Twitter.

Read more: All the differences between COVID-19 vaccines, summarized in a simple table

Social media photos show Eyers bouldering, biking, running and lifting weights. A friend who paid tribute to him on Facebook described him as “one of the most active and fit people I know.”

McCann told Sky News his brother had not been vaccinated because he “felt he would be fine” and “didn’t know anyone who had contracted COVID.”

“Second, he had lightly subscribed to this era of disinformation we live in and some conspiracy theories about the safety of the vaccine and what’s in it. [it]”she said, according to Sky News.

Before being put on a ventilator, he told his doctors he wished he had been vaccinated, she added.

“He was fighting and wished he had done it,” McCann told Sky News, adding that he personally hadn’t told him that because he was “a really proud and stubborn man.”

The Eyers family are now encouraging people to get vaccinated.

His 19-year-old daughter, Macey May Curran, told the Liverpool Echo that her father is his “real superhero, my best friend and my father”.

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“Please, please get the vaccine, I was one of the young girls who only got the vaccine to go on ‘vacation’, but now I have seen the reality of what COVID actually does to us, ”she said, according to Echo. “Standing next to a hospital bed staring at my dad and not knowing I’m by his side is killing me.”

COVID-19 patients have increasingly expressed regret that they did not receive the vaccine. So far, around 58% of the UK’s population has been fully vaccinated, according to a Reuters tracker.

More than 130,000 people nationwide have died from the virus, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.

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