What Covid patients ask for before losing their fight for life
Devastating testimony from doctors has revealed the most common request of seriously ill Covid patients. For many, it's the final thing they'll ever say, writes Keith Woods.
Opinion
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Brytney Cobia is not Australian. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.
But she has a message that should resonate with tens of thousands of Australians, in particular the people who marched in the ridiculous protests in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane at the weekend.
Because Ms Cobia is a doctor. She has seen young people die, people who had the option of getting vaccinated and chose not to. And she has heard their last words.
“I’ve made a lot of progress encouraging people to get vaccinated lately,” Dr Cobia wrote last week.
“Do you want to know how? I’m admitting young healthy people to the hospital with very serious Covid infections.
“One of the last things they do before they’re intubated is beg me for the vaccine. I hold their hand and tell them that I’m sorry, but it’s too late.”
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In Alabama, unlike Australia, vaccines are readily available. Yet only one in three adults have rolled up their sleeves.
As in Sydney, almost all Covid-19 patients now in hospital are infected with the Delta variant. And many more of them are young than in previous waves of the virus.
Another American doctor, a Louisiana infectious disease specialist named Dr Catherine O’Neal, put it succinctly.
“This year’s virus is not last year’s virus,” she said. “It’s attacking our 40-year-olds. It’s attacking our parents and young grandparents. It’s getting our kids.”
Time will tell if the violent march in Sydney at the weekend, attended by thousands, turns into a “super-spreader” event. If it does, how many of those that were there will find themselves begging for the vaccine in their final breaths?
To an extent we in Australia have all become complacent about this virus. On the Gold Coast, we have had so many scares, from the family from Wuhan who became the first to be treated for the disease at Gold Coast University Hospital in January 2020, to another traveller from China, who was out and about in the community before being diagnosed at the weekend.
None of these events – or the many in between – have seen the virus seed and spread in the Gold Coast community.
Perhaps that is just luck. Luck that may be about to run out.
An extraordinary scientific paper published this month showed the Delta variant had viral loads that were about 1260 times higher than earlier strains on initial positive tests.
In layman’s terms, what that really means is that Delta takes hold in the body much quicker, meaning people are infectious sooner.
“These data highlight that the Delta variant could be more infectious during the early stage of the infection,” the researchers wrote.
It helps explain why Sydney’s “gold standard” contact tracers have struggled to keep up this time around. And on the Gold Coast, it tells us we can’t drop our guard. That the walls are closing in like never before, that measure like social distancing and the wearing of masks are more important – not less.
The complacency of one limousine driver has scuttled Sydney. The slow pace of the vaccine roll-out, too, is costing lives. When those vaccines finally arrive in big numbers, as they will soon, the lesson from the United States is that misinformation will be the next great danger.
If only the Facebook-on-tour mob causing havoc in the streets of the Harbour City knew how close they were to the real truth.
As they made fools of themselves, just a short distance away, a 39-year-old woman who had wanted to take the vaccine but was not yet eligible, Adriana Midori Takara, lay dying.
“They put her in an induced coma so her body could recover but she never did,” friend Marlene Coimbra told The Daily Telegraph.
“She was unconscious the whole time that she was there and on her last day, Saturday, a few blocks away, the anti-vaxxers were protesting.
“Those protesters are an insult to what happened to her.”
JULY 14: SPOT THE CITY WITH THE COVID PROBLEM
IT’S the surprising tale of two cities.
In one, crowds through the streets. In the other, a world away, the streets are empty.
Latest data shows the first city is recording more than 3000 coronavirus cases a day, about 35 per 100,000 population. The second is recording around 100 a day, a rate of about 2 per 100,000.
The citizens of the city with vastly more cases – London – are celebrating their freedom as Covid-19 restrictions are ditched. On Monday, they even welcomed more than 60,000 fans to Wembley for the final of the European Football Championships, with barely a mask in sight.
In contrast, the citizens of our second city, Sydney, were enduring another miserable weak in lockdown, with no end in sight.
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It’s a strange dichotomy. But entirely understandable when one considers that while at best one in 10 Sydneysiders are vaccinated, more than two thirds of the population of the UK have had at least one jab.
It means our Sydney friends are vulnerable to this disease in a way that their London counterparts are not.
So Sydney locks down, while London opens up.
In Queensland, Brisbane endured four days of lockdown and three weeks of mask wearing for a mere handful of cases. The Gold Coast suffered almost as much disruption for a grand total of none.
And dark mutterings abound about dreaded border checkpoints returning.
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Are our political and health leaders over-reacting, while those in Britain are acting with careless abandon?
No. Leaders here have a justifiable fear of what may happen if the Delta strain of Covid-19 is let loose in a community with a low rate of vaccination.
In the UK, they no longer have that fear, because of their ready embrace of the vaccine miracle.
If we in the Gold Coast want similar freedoms, then it is incumbent on us all to get the jab as soon as it is offered.
It is a hard message in a seemingly selfish age, but it is not simply a case of personal choice to take the vaccine or give it a miss.
Everyone who rolls up their sleeve is not just helping themselves and their immediate family, but also the wider community.
This columnist has heard people make numerous excuses for not taking the vaccine which always ultimately boil down to some kind of minor personal concern. People whose health is not vulnerable, who do not lose income during lockdowns.
But there will never be true freedom again, of a kind now being ushered in across the UK, unless we can put this devil of a virus behind us.
In an editorial this week celebrating Britain’s “freedom day” (when the last of restrictions is ended), UK tabloid The Sun noted that if Australia continues to hew to the ideal of zero cases, “their isolation could last years”.
That would be disastrous for this country – and the Gold Coast in particular.
What we instead need to do is trust the science and ignore those shrill voices that seek to cast doubt on the safety and efficacy of vaccines.
Yes, supply has been slow, but it is coming soon to all Australians and we must roll up our sleeve when our chance comes.
Once everyone has had that chance, the lockdowns can end.
And Australian cities can celebrate the sort of freedom now joyously celebrated in the streets of London.
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