After months of waiting to receive an immunization against COVID-19 and suffering from the disease, U.S. Air Force veteran Diane Drewes was on her last sighs at a hospice in Ohio when the phone rang. She was a health worker, calling to schedule her first appointment for the vaccine.
Drewes’ daughter Laura Brown was surprised by the time of the call in January, but did not react furiously or explain that her 75-year-old mother was on the verge of death. It just wouldn’t make sense, he says.
“But my sister and I were upset because it came too late,” Brown said, “it seemed like a final insult.”
More than 247,000 people have died of COVID-19 in the United States since the vaccines were released in mid-December. Authorities had warned that performing enough inoculations to achieve collective immunity would take months. Given the initial lack of vaccines and the spread of viruses, the sad reality was that some people would contract the virus and die before they could be vaccinated.
Polls show that a considerable percentage of the U.S. population is wary of the vaccine, making it impossible to say exactly how many of the dead would have wanted to be immunized. But Brown says his mother did want him – desperately.
Other families have similarly painful stories of loved ones being infected after months of caring for themselves and then dying before they could be vaccinated.
Charlotte Crawford, who has spent 40 years working in the microbiology lab at Parkland Hospital in Dallas, was completely immunized in January when she received the two doses of the Moderna vaccine because of her work. But she had to suffer the agony of seeing her husband and two adult children contract COVID-19 and die before she could be vaccinated.
Henry Royce Crawford, 65, had an appointment to be vaccinated when he became ill, his widow said. His children, Roycie Crawford, 33; and Natalia Crawford, 38; they also waited for the vaccine, but had not received it when they became ill and died.
“All I know is that I had three funerals in three weeks,” Crawford of Forney, Texas said.