‘It’s too late’: Doctor says dying COVID-19 patients ask for vaccines

An Alabama doctor pleaded for people to get vaccinated against COVID-19 as she shared grim tales of young, healthy, unvaccinated people dying from the disease.

Dr Brytney Cobia’s thought-provoking Facebook post on Sunday has been liked and shared thousands of times.

“One of the last things they do before they are intubated is begging me for the vaccine. I hold their hand and tell them I’m sorry, but it’s too late, ”she said of her COVID-19 patients.

“A few days later, when I call the time of death, I hug their family members and tell them that the best way to honor their loved one is to go for the shot and encourage everyone they know to do the same.

“They cry. And they tell me they didn’t know. They thought it was a hoax. They thought it was political. They thought because they had a certain blood type or a certain skin color. , they wouldn’t get that sick, they thought it was “just the flu.”

But they were wrong, she said, and they can’t go back.

“So they thank me and they are going to get the vaccine. And I go back to my office, I write their obituaries and I say a little prayer that this loss will save more lives, ”she wrote.

As the highly contagious delta variant increases across the country, the coronavirus is hitting the unvaccinated population with inordinate force. In Alabama, 94% of COVID-19 hospital patients and 96% of Alabamians who died from COVID-19 since April were not fully vaccinated, reports AL.com.

Alabama ranks among the states with the lowest percentage of population vaccinated, with only 34% fully vaccinated.

Cobia, who works at Grandview Medical Center in Birmingham, told AL.com the current influx of patients reminded her of last November, just before Alabama’s peak in COVID-19 cases and deaths.

“What we saw in December 2020 and January 2021 was the absolute peak, the peak of the pandemic, where I was signing 10 death certificates a day,” she said.

For those hesitant about the vaccine, she encouraged people to report their concerns to their own doctors. She said she frequently finds that people who are not vaccinated have not spoken to their doctors but have instead made their decision based on information from other sources.

“And most of them, they’re very honest, they give me answers. “I talked to this person, I saw this thing on Facebook, I got this email, I saw this on the news,” you know, “those are all the reasons I didn’t am not vaccinated, ”she said.