Illinois Family Advocates With Vaccine Skeptics After Vaxxed Grandmother Dies At 66: “Our Worst Fears Have Come True”

A Springfield family is advocating for vaccine skeptics to get the vaccine after their beloved matriarch, who was vaccinated but immunocompromised, died of COVID-19 last month.

“We did everything we needed to do,” said Marc Ayers. “We have listened to the experts, we have distanced ourselves socially, we have worn masks, we have been vaccinated, and we have to deal with the loss of our mother because others refused to do the same.”

Marc Ayers’ mother Candace Ayers, 66, has died at HSHS St. John’s Hospital in Springfield after a month-long battle with COVID-19. The grandmother, who enjoyed spending time with her daughter’s triplets, reportedly caught the disease while visiting a family friend in Mississippi.

She is one of nearly 600 fully vaccinated people in Illinois to die from COVID this year, including 278 in September. About 53% of them, like Ayers, had an underlying health problem or were immunocompromised, while 87% are over 65, according to state data.

Marc Ayers said he was worried when his parents wanted to visit the wife of a friend who died of a heart problem exacerbated by COVID-19.

“We were very nervous about sending her because it was Mississippi, but my mother’s doctor allowed her to travel saying that as long as she was vaccinated there was no problem, ”he said. “We should have had a second opinion. “

The concern for her mother was not just because of her age, but because of her rheumatoid arthritis, an autoimmune disease.

In mid-July, Mississippi was at the start of a wave of positive COVID-19 cases with the arrival of the delta variant – reaching a higher number of daily cases than for the pandemic as a whole. It was also happening when Republican Mississippi Governor Tate Reeves called federal recommendations to wear masks indoors as “silly” and “harmful.”

“It has nothing – let me repeat – it has nothing to do with rational science. In Mississippi, we believe in freedom, ”Reeves said at the time. COVID-19 restrictions are lax or nonexistent there in a state with the lowest vaccination rates in the country.

As Candace Ayers returned to Illinois in late July, Mississippi was on track to have the third highest infection rate in the country.

“My parents were only in Mississippi for four days, and on the trip home, my mom already had full-blown COVID symptoms,” said Marc Ayer.

Back home, Marc Ayers and his sister didn’t think it could be COVID-19. After all, they have been vaccinated.

“But over the days, his symptoms got worse,” Marc Ayers said. “On July 28 our worst fears came true, and she tested positive and was not improving.”

She was taken to the nearest hospital in Springfield where she received antibiotics and sent home. At the beginning of August, she was brought back to the emergency room where she was finally admitted.

His condition would only worsen over the next three weeks. She was put on an oxygen mask, had a blood transfusion and was eventually put on a ventilator.

“It was just too much for his body to handle,” said Marc Ayers. “We made the decision to put her in comfort care and wanted to let her go as peacefully as possible.”

She died in early September.

The obituary calls for the unvaccinated

The family was devastated and angry. They wanted to challenge those who politicized the pandemic and refused to take it seriously.

So, Amanda Ayers – Marc Ayers ‘sister and Candace Ayers’ daughter – wrote an obituary that was published in The State Journal-Register.

“She was preceded in death by more than 4,531,799 other people infected with COVID-19,” the obituary said. “She was vaccinated but was infected by others who chose not to be. The cost was his life.

The aim was to send a message not only to the people they knew, but to the whole country, said Marc Ayers.

“We wanted to send this message home that it is the unvaccinated and unmasked people in this country who are largely responsible for the current situation, not only with our family but as a country,” said Marc Ayers.

The CDC said the Delta variant was twice as contagious as previous variants of COVID-19 and that unvaccinated people were at the greatest risk of transmission.

However, even fully immunized immunocompromised people are particularly vulnerable to breakthrough cases; limiting their exposure to COVID is the reason public health officials are pushing large-scale vaccinations for the entire population. This herd immunity would also help protect other people who make up the small percentage of people for whom vaccines don’t work.

“We see a segment of the population not only refusing to be vaccinated but making it a political issue, or at worst calling it a hoax that only downplays the importance of this disease,” said Marc Ayers. “Then when the FDA approves a vaccine, people politically refuse to take it, thinking this pandemic is a joke. “

More importantly, said Marc Ayers, he wants immunosuppressed people and their families to exercise extreme caution when considering venturing outside of their bubbles.

“I wish someone had given us this warning, and it’s a mistake we have to live with for the rest of our lives not to have a mother,” he said.