Father of 5 dies of COVID after texting ‘I should have been vaccinated’

A Nevada woman shares her family’s grief after her fiance expressed regret that she did not receive the COVID-19 vaccine shortly before dying of the disease.

“He was only 39 years old; our babies don’t have fathers now, ”Jessica DuPreez told the KVVU station in Las Vegas. “You can’t say, ‘I’m young and that won’t affect me. Because it will.

DuPreez said she and her fiance, Michael Freedy, wanted to wait until the vaccine was available for a year, to see how it might affect people.

“There was never any intention not to get it,” she said.

Shortly after the couple traveled to San Diego for a vacation with their five children, aged 1 to 17, DuPreez said Freedy fell ill from sunburn and had to be admitted to the emergency room. There he tested positive for COVID-19 and his health deteriorated.

“He panics saying he doesn’t want to die and that he doesn’t want to leave his babies fatherless,” DuPreez told USA Today.

The scans showed he had contracted pneumonia in both of his lungs. He eventually had to be put on a ventilator and, against his will, forcibly sedated, DuPreez said in a GoFundMe article.

She told KVVU that her last text was: “I should have been vaccinated”.

“Embrace your loved ones. Because it turned out so fast, ”she wrote on the GoFundMe page. “And I would give practically anything to hear Mike say my name and give me a hug and be able to tell him that I love him more than ever.”

Since Freedy’s diagnosis, DuPreez said she had been vaccinated, as had her oldest child. She now encourages anyone who is reluctant to get vaccinated just because of side effect issues to do so.

“Anyone can have a bad reaction to any vaccine throughout history, but I would react badly to the vaccine rather than having to bury my husband,” she told CNN.

More than 610,000 people have died from COVID-19 in the United States since the pandemic began in early 2020, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

While deaths have generally continued to decline nationwide since vaccines became available, there has been a slight increase in deaths from COVID-19 in recent weeks, due to the more contagious delta variant of the virus. .

The CDC last week rescinded its previous mask guidelines and now recommends that all people, regardless of immunization status, wear masks indoors in parts of the country where there is a substantial risk of transmitting the disease. COVID-19. That’s more than half the country, according to the latest data.