“Mom, I love you and I wish that I’d got the shot,” Vaccine hesitant couple died of Covid-19, changed their mind too late

While the health officials, president Joe Biden and the White House administration are doing everything in their power to improve the vaccination rate across the country, a decent number of people still decide to remain vaccine hesitant, exposing themselves at high risk to end up hospitalized or even dead.

In an effort to improve the vaccination rate, numerous measures were enforced so far and many more are expected to come in place. While the vaccination sites are getting ready for vaccinating children aged 5-11, there is vaccine mandate for federal workers and workers in companies with more than 100 employees in place.

Recently, a booster dose of the Pfizer vaccine was approved for certain groups of people who got the Pfizer vaccine and this week eligible are also becoming those who received the Moderna and Johnson & Johnson vaccines. But again, all of this is not enough for some folks and so was the case with this Virginia couple who relied to social media news, refused to get the vaccine and died of Covid-19.

As multiple sources reported, the Virginia couple contracted the Covid-19 and died just weeks apart despite their family relatives’ efforts to make them get vaccinated in the last couple of months. Kevin and Misty Mitchem, both in their 40s, relied on the social media news about the possible negative consequences of the vaccine and that’s the only reason why they decided not to get the shot.

“They’d just been leery. They were going off what they’ve been hearing and reading on the internet,” Kevin’s brother told the Richmond Times-Dispatch.

The 48-year-old Kevin was the first to contract the virus and he was told to rest home right after he got the positive test. Few days later, his 46-year-old wife who was living with diabetes, got her positive test too and he was immediately rushed to hospital and put on ventilator because her condition worsened in a matter of hours. He died late September.

Don, Kevin’s father, said Kevin called him when Misty went to the hospital and when he later went himself, according to NBC 4. Don went to the hospital to see Kevin before he was put on a ventilator.

“He said, ‘Dad, I’m scared to death,'” Don told NBC 4, adding that he told Kevin to call his mother, Terry.

“He called me up and said, ‘Mom, I love you and I wish that I’d got the shot,'” Terry told NBC 4. “Of course, I told him, ‘It’s past. You can’t do anything about it.'”

Kevin died on October 8.

Kevin’s parents were both fully vaccinated and they were among the first to get the booster shot once approved. They did everything they could to make Kevin and Misty get the shot, but without success.

While Misty was living with diabetes and it was expected that her condition might get serious once she contracts the virus, Kevin was “healthy” and “very active” and his closest family relatives feel angry because they didn’t push the couple harder into getting the vaccine. “Part of our pain is anger,” Kevin’s brother said. “Anger because people are still not getting the vaccine.”

The couple left four children behind. Kevin also had another child and a grandson as well.