In Texas, the last commandment of a vaccine-skeptical mother: vaccinate her children

Washington | “Please make sure my children are vaccinated.” An American woman recounted the tragic story of her cousin and husband, a vaccine skeptic, who died of COVID two weeks later, leaving their four children orphans.

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Dottie Jones told US media that these are Lydia Rodriguez’s words to her sister just before she was intubated, convinced that her cousin would still be alive if she was vaccinated.

Lydia Rodriguez, 42, died on Monday, two weeks after her husband, Lawrence, 49, died after several weeks in hospital.

They lived in La Mark, Texas, which is one of the largest states in the country that is experiencing a spike in hospitalizations and is still falling behind on vaccinations combined with a lack of trained staff in hospitals.

According to Dottie Jones, Lydia Rodriguez has changed her mind about vaccination. But at that time she was already in intensive care.

Ms. Jones, who organized a fundraiser to help the couple’s children, decided to make this drama public because it was “the real story of what could happen,” she told the channel. ABC13 language, picked up by other American media and on social networks.

“I’m not trying to scare people, I just want people to understand that this virus is real and this delta type is more brutal than anything we’ve known” so far, she added.

“It breaks my heart that people believe in false information. Disinformation kills people, and we need to uncover the truth.

The delta variant has become the dominant strain of COVID-19 in Texas, which is seeing an alarming increase in deaths that most affect unvaccinated people.

However, encouraging government data shows that vaccination has accelerated in recent weeks.

Thus, approximately 55% of the eligible population (12 years and over) in the state have been fully vaccinated and approximately 66% have received at least one dose.

That’s still lower than the national average, however, as 59.6% of the US population has received a full vaccination and 70.2% have received at least one dose, according to data from the Centers for Disease Prevention and Control (CDC), the lead agency. .

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