An Obituary To Get Vaccinated At The Earliest

On September 14, 2021, the family of a man from Alabama used his obituary to plead to everyone to get vaccinated at the earliest.

The man, Ray Martin Demonia, aged 73 used to run an antique business for the past 40 years and suffered a stroke in 2020, when the coronavirus was starting to be a concern for the citizens of America. He wanted to get vaccinated at the earliest while recovering from the stroke as he wanted to shake hands on deals and go back to selling his antiques and he knew what the vaccine meant for him to survive.

An Obituary To Get Vaccinated At The Earliest

He knew that the vaccination was the only way out of the pandemic and wanted to make sure that he and his family got vaccinated at the earliest.

On August 23^rd, he went to Cullman Regional Medical Centre complaining of heart problems. He was admitted after 12 hours, and those 12 hours felt like 12 years for the family as every moment spent without getting medical care was creating more and more panic among the family members. His wife got a call from the hospital saying that they had called 43 different hospitals for a specialized cardiac ICU bed but to no avail.

The hospitals were full of Covid patients and shortage of beds meant a delay in treatment even for a man who had a history with cardiac problems and was complaining regarding the same for hours now. Finally, he was airlifted to Rush Foundation Hospital in Meridian, MS, almost 200 miles away from his home where he succumbed on September 1.

In his honour, his family decided to make a plea to all fellow Americans to get vaccinated at the earliest in his obituary as they felt that if they could make others realize what they had seen and go through in the last few days, people would realise the importance of vaccines and the medical crisis that not just the state of Alabama but the whole country is facing.

His wife said that the CRMC staff contacted 43 hospitals in 3 states in search of Cardiac ICU beds and finally located one in Meridian and that he would not have wanted anyone to go through what he and his family went through.

The Alabama Hospital Association declared that the hospitals in the state are still short of ICUs. The number of patients was outnumbering the number of ICU beds in the state. As per the AHA website, there are 1,530 ICU beds accommodating 1,541 patients.

As per the data released by the AHA, 83% of the COVID patients in ICU had not been vaccinated against the virus, 4% were partially vaccinated and13% were fully vaccinated. Even in times of turmoil, some states of the USA have a relatively lower rate of vaccination as people are reluctant in getting vaccinated.

Recently, the CDC and FDA approved the Johnson and Johnson vaccine along with the already approved Moderna and Pfizer vaccine to increase the vaccine tally in order to get more and more people to vaccinate. But still, there are people who don’t want to take the vaccine.

As per CDC data, around 54% of Americans are fully vaccinated to date, while around 53.7% of the citizens of Alabama have received both their doses. Demonia’s family urged American citizens to take up the vaccination count at the earliest as it was one of Ray’s last wishes to get vaccinated.

After what they went through, they don’t want anyone else to face the same problems they had when Ray was suffering. They made a plea to all to get vaccinated in order to free up resources for non- Covid emergencies and reduce the burden on the medical staff.