After months of hoping to receive a COVID-19 vaccine and weeks of fighting the disease after it never arrived, Air Force veteran Diane Drewes breathed a sigh of relief at a hospice in Ohio when the phone rang. She was a health worker who called to schedule her first appointment for a coronavirus shot.
Drewes ’daughter Laura Brown was stunned by the time of the call in January, but she didn’t even tell by phone or even explain that her 75-year-old mother was about to die. There was no sense, he said.
“But my sister and I were upset that she arrived too late,” Brown said. “It sounded like the last insult.”
More than 247,000 people have died of COVID-19 in the United States since vaccines were first available in mid-December. Officials had warned that prescribing enough vaccines to get the herd immunity would take months. And, with the initial supply of extremely limited vaccines and the virus running nationwide during the winter, it was a sad reality that some contracted COVID-19 and died before being inoculated.
With surveys showing a large percentage of the American population being suspicious of vaccines, it is impossible to say exactly how many of the dead would have wanted even one vaccine. But Brown said his mother desperately wanted one. Other families have similar and heartbreaking stories of loved ones ’infections after months of staying safe and then dying before receiving a dose.
Charlotte Crawford, who has spent 40 years working in the microbiology lab at Dallas Parkland Hospital, received the full vaccination in January after receiving two doses of the Modern vaccine because of her work. Still, she endured the agony of watching her husband and two adult children contract COVID-19 and die before they could be shot.
Henry Royce Crawford, 65, had an appointment to get vaccinated when he fell ill, his widow said. Her children, Roycie Crawford, 33, and Natalia Crawford, 38, also wanted the shooting, but had yet to find any when they became ill and died, Crawford said.
The days since his death in late February and early March seem like a mess for Crawford; he is still trying to resolve what happened while begging anyone to hear the vaccine as soon as possible.
“All I know is that I did three funerals in three weeks,” Crawford of Forney, Texas said.
Although more than 96 million people in the U.S. have received at least one dose of vaccine, only 53 million are fully vaccinated, or about 16 percent of the country’s population, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
With the doses more widely available, the shots continue at an accelerated pace. More than a dozen states have opened vaccine eligibility for all adults amid rising virus cases.
Only the Johnson & Johnson vaccine is completed after a dose, so the waiting time between the first and second vaccines of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines leaves a period of weeks in which the recipient remains vulnerable and is infected.
Waiting for a second shot turned out to be too long for Richard Rasmussen of Las Vegas, said daughter Julie Rasmussen.
Richard Rasmussen, 73, fervently believed in the use of masks to protect himself and received his first dose of Pfizer vaccine in early January. “I was very excited to receive the vaccine,” he said.
However, Rasmussen tested positive for the virus 10 days later and died on Feb. 19 before receiving a second dose, Julie Rasmussen said. His final descent was impressive for his speed, he said.
“And now I’m alone,” Rasmussen said in an email interview. “He was my best friend. We texted every day, all day. I do not have brothers. No husband / boyfriend. He was single. I’m all alone browsing the legal system and packing his house. “
The same day Rasmussen died, Deidre Love Sullens of Oklahoma City was in the icy, snow-covered parking lot of a vaccine clinic amid grief over the loss of both her mother, Catherine Douglas, 65. , as of stepfather, Asa Bartlett Douglas, 58, to COVID-19 within 16 days before they could be shot.
“They and I considered the vaccine as the only life-changing factor that would allow us to see each other again in person. It was our goal. We all wanted to get the vaccine to meet again, so that my mother could play with my daughter again, so maybe we could visit my grandmother at the nursing home and not restrict ourselves to visits to the window, “Sullens said in an email interview.
That cold February day, with a few doses of leftovers because bad weather prevented others from making appointments, a worker called Sullens to the clinic to get vaccinated. Sullens said she was overwhelmed by tears and a “surreal sense of disbelief” when she entered.
“My mind was thinking,‘ If only my parents could have endured two more months … they would also be here taking the vaccine. They would be alive. They would be here with me, ”he said.