‘He should have given me the damn vaccine’: latest shocking message from COVID-19 patient before death

Micheal Freedy was not against the vaccination, his fiancee said, but like many Americans, he had not yet been vaccinated against the coronavirus. According to Jessica DuPreez, the 39-year-old father just wanted to wait and find out more about how people were responding to vaccines. “We only waited a year” said The Washington Post on Sunday.

But everything has changed. This weekend – the DuPreez duel has been going on for days and her voice is breaking – the Las Vegas mother-of-five gave interview after interview to spread the same message: “Get vaccinated. He revealed Freedy came to the same conclusion in a final text as he battled COVID-19 in an intensive care unit in July.

“He should have given me the damn vaccine”, he wrote to DuPreez, according to a photo he shared with The Post.

Freedy, listed on her phone as “My Heart,” died Thursday, leaving behind her young children, including a 17 month old boy.

“My children no longer have a father because we doubt”he told CNN as a child cried in the background. “Huebiese preferred a bad reaction to the vaccine rather than having to bury my husband. I would do it without hesitation ”.

The highly transmissible delta variant of the coronavirus has given new urgency to vaccination efforts in the United States, with some hospitals teeming with new ones and health officials warning that “the war has changed.” Multi-million dollar lotteries, door-to-door disclosure and doctor calls have failed to convince millions of Americans, prompting governments and employers to increasingly resort to warrants to their workers. Just under half of the country is fully vaccinated and 45% of the population is vaccinated in Nevada, the home state of Freedy and DuPreez.

Despite new evidence that people with immunity can still spread the virus, authorities say vaccines remain highly effective, especially in preventing death and serious illness. The vast majority of deceased or hospitalized COVID-19 patients are not vaccinated.

Some are adamant: A Washington Post-ABC News poll found in early June that 29% of Americans did not intend to be vaccinated, up several percentage points from a few months earlier. But there are many like Freedy: undecided, worried about side effects, who say they want to wait a little longer. With the increase in coronavirus cases, authorities are struggling to persuade them.

Added to that post are people like DuPreez, who has changed his mind following a heartbreaking loss. In fact, she says she and her oldest son were vaccinated after Freedy fell ill.

She claims that she and her fiance – the father of her two youngest children – never looked down on science, they just wanted to be careful. They wore masks, he said, and sanitized their hands and traveled to collect their orders. And when they went to San Diego with the kids in mid-July, the threat of the pandemic seemed to be fading quickly. Thousands of people had recently flocked to the Las Vegas area to attend a Garth Brooks concert and Ultimate Fighting Championship event.

But Freedy ended up in the ER with horrible sunburns on her trip to the beach. He could not eat or sleep and had chills, but the doctor sent him home. He returned to the emergency room when the symptoms persisted, he learned there was more than just sun poisoning: he tested positive for the coronavirus. Freedy returned home with instructions to drink water and self-isolate.

Then one day, around 3 am, Freedy woke DuPreez “in a panic”, according to the woman. He was having trouble breathing. When he tried to get up he fell. I knew something was seriously wrong. The couple rushed to another emergency room, where staff found he had low blood oxygen and were surprised he was even able to speak.

Freedy was given oxygen, then a machine to force his lungs.

She tried to be positive.

“Keep in mind you can be home in a few days, do whatever they tell you,” she wrote to Freedy after he messaged her concerned about “the long term effects. “of what was happening to his body.

Then last Monday came a flood of more serious messages: “911 911 911”.

Freedy immediately went to intensive care.

DuPreez started to cry as he recounted his last phone call.

“I told him to please fight so that he can come back to us. He said yes, that he had promised, that he was trying, but that it was difficult. “

The end was brutal. “It was exactly like what you see on TV,” he said, shouting “Emergency, code red!” and people running around with shovels and asking for scalpels, pulse checks, desperate chest compressions. “And when you’re a spectator, you can’t try to sneak out the door. Just stay at the back of the room and out of the way. “

Freedy’s face turned purple, she said. And then it’s gone.

The Clark County Coroner’s Office did not immediately respond to questions about Freedy’s death on Sunday.

For DuPreez, going public with his grief has brought support, but also insults, underlining the country’s bitter division over the pandemic and how to fight it.

He stopped answering the phone. He set his Facebook page private and did the same with Freedy’s Twitter account, as comments insulting fat people reached the deceased’s phone. For every beautiful message, he said, there are three or four unpleasant ones.

“If your fiance was stupid enough not to get the shot while working in a casino, it’s his fault,” read a post he shared with The post office. “You’ve put yourself in this situation,” said another.

Others accuse her of playing the game of “fear propaganda” around the coronavirus and instigating the “mainstream media,” she said.

“There are people who have even told me that everything is a lie … that Mike is still alive, that we are just a made-up family, that my son who cried on the news is an actor.”

As DuPreez goes through life’s chores between interviews, she marvels at the resilience of her children aged 17, 10, 7, 6, and 17 months.

“They stop and cry, they get mad and say they miss it, and then they start playing again,” he said. “They just get lost in their games. I have never been so grateful for an iPad in my life. Because if I could get lost in a game like that, it would probably be a lot easier. “

(c) 2021, The Washington Post

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