A child receives a Covid-19 vaccine on May 13, 2021 in Houston, Texas. Getty Images/Brandon Bell
A “healthy” 28-year-old in Alabama died of COVID-19 after not getting the vaccine, his mother said.
She told The Washington Post she regrets not getting her family vaccinated when they had the chance.
Alabama has the lowest vaccination rate of any US state and is seeing a spike in COVID-19 cases.
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After losing her 28-year-old son to COVID-19, an Alabama mother said she regrets that her family didn’t get the vaccine.
Christy Carpenter told The Washington Post that her family didn’t get vaccinated because they had concerns about how soon it was rolled out.
“It took years to create other vaccines, and the coronavirus vaccine was created very quickly,” she said. “It took watching my son die and me suffering the effects of COVID for us to realize we need the vaccine.”
“We did not get vaccinated when we had the opportunity and regret that so much now,” she added.
Read more: Don’t punish the vaccinated – make it harder to choose to be unvaccinated
Her son, Curt Carpenter, was hospitalized after getting COVID-19 in March. He was placed on a ventilator after developing pneumonia. He died on May 2. His mother was also hospitalized with COVID-19, but was able to recover.
Carpenter told The Post her son was healthy prior to catching the virus, and that he initially believed the pandemic to be a “hoax.” She said his last words were: “This is not a hoax, this is real.”
Many people have expressed regret over not getting vaccinated after being hospitalized with COVID-19 or watching a loved one struggle with or die from the disease. Meanwhile, authorities are trying to counteract vaccine hesitancy and encourage people to get the shot.
Alabama has the lowest vaccination rate of any US state, with about 34% of its population fully vaccinated, according to data compiled by the Mayo Clinic. As of Sunday, nearly 50% of the entire US population, or 163 million people, was fully vaccinated, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Alabama is also among a group of states seeing a spike in COVID-19 cases as the more transmissible Delta variant rapidly spreads.
US health officials have said it is now a “pandemic of the unvaccinated,” announcing last month that nearly all deaths from COVID-19 in the US are now among the unvaccinated.
More than 610,000 Americans have died of COVID-19 since the beginning of the pandemic.
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San Diego Padres reliever Daniel Camarena, a 28-year-old rookie making only his second career big-league appearance on Thursday night, authored a moment that may define his career by hitting a grand slam against Washington Nationals ace Max Scherzer.
Camarena did his deed in the fourth inning, with the Padres trailing by an 8-2 margin. Despite being down in the count 1-2, he golfed a 96 mph fastball that was below the strike zone into the right-field stands. Take a look:
According to Statcast’s calculations, Camarena’s home run left the bat traveling at 107.2 mph and carried some 416 feet.
Camarena is the second player in Padres franchise history to hit a grand slam as a pitcher, according to the research done by Sarah Langs of MLB.com. The first was Mike Corkins, who did the deed on September 4, 1970. (Corkin made 157 appearances in total for the Padres, including 44 starts over six seasons.)
Camarena had previously made his big-league debut in mid-June, throwing 2 ⅔ innings against the Cincinnati Reds. In that contest, he allowed three runs on four hits and a walk. He also struck out three batters on 52 pitches. Camarena did take an at-bat as part of that game, striking out versus Reds right-hander Vladimir Gutiérrez.
Camarena joined the Padres in February 2020 as a minor-league free agent. He was originally drafted by the New York Yankees as a 20th-round pick in 2011 out of Cathedral Catholic High School in San Diego, Calif. Per Google, Cathedral Catholic is less than a 30-minute drive to Petco Park, making Camarena a hometown product, in a sense.
Since being drafted by the Yankees, Camarena had bounced around the league, spending time on the farms of the Chicago Cubs, San Francisco Giants, and Minnesota Twins.