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My wife’s father died suddenly a few weeks ago. He was 83, in robust good health. His mind was as sharp as ever. Physically, he was in better shape than when I first met him, then in his mid-40s.
When he retired ~25 years ago, he made a conscious effort to take off extra weight that had accumulated over the years, and had been diligent about keeping it off. He was extremely active in his parish church, had walked at least two miles/day, and when not visiting grandchildren in far-off places, had worked in the extensive gardens at his house for hours every day.
At least as of a few years ago, he was still painting the exterior of his two-story house on a regular schedule, climbing ladders and contorting into positions to get the job done that gave his wife palpitations. He came from hardy Irish/German farming stock in Western Maryland. His father and two of his four siblings lived into their 90s, and up until about a month ago, we saw no reason he would not do the same.
What changed?
One Saturday, he did some chores and mowed the lawn—normal Saturday. Sunday morning at Mass, he felt faint and weak. He went to the hospital, was misdiagnosed with a minor infection and was sent home. He kept feeling worse and returned to the hospital later that day, and was admitted. Within a day or so, his blood was attacking itself and multiple internal organs were shutting down. The staff were giving him blood transfusions, and getting ready to start him on dialysis. By Thursday morning, he was dead.
Less than five days from feeling fine to gone.
Here's what’s important to know: Three days before feeling faint, he had received a COVID booster shot. One of my wife’s sisters is a doctor and one is a physician's assistant, and they both believe the booster shot triggered the events that led to his death. They are not anti-vaxxers. They were both very pro-vaccination during the 2021 vaccine debates, and I think they still believe the vaccinations were a net positive.
A possibly related story: the day after my father-in-law’s funeral, as we were making the more than 800-mile drive home, my wife’s phone lit up with a text stream about a woman she works with. The woman in question was in her late 50s and had an underlying heart condition. She had gone to the cardiologist a month or so prior and everything checked out great.
The day of my father-in-law’s funeral, she went to the hospital with congestive heart failure. Two days before that, she had received a COVID booster. No one at the largest hospital in the second largest city in the southeast US asked anything about her COVID vaccination/booster status. Within a week of entering the hospital, she also died.
The sudden deterioration in health could be coincidental timing in one or both cases. Or, there could be something seriously bad going on.
How will we ever know? Apparently, hospitals aren’t even curious about the possible connection between COVID boosters and negative health outcomes.
When the vaccine was being deployed, governments and pharmaceutical companies were aligned in wanting to motivate the population to get vaccinated. The distinction between “dying with COVID” and “dying from COVID” was blurred or obliterated. For a long time, anyone who tested positive for COVID and had died for any reason was counted in the “died of COVID” statistics.
Where is the daily ticker on people dying suddenly after receiving the COVID boosters? Governments and pharmaceutical companies are not incentivized to publicize this information—or even to look into it any deeper. I don’t think there will be a ticker. There will be anecdotes. Many anecdotes become data, if looked at in the right way.
Whatever your views of COVID vaccines at the time they were first introduced, please think about what level of risk the current strains of COVID pose to most people. (To me, it seems minimal. You may see it differently or may have different risk factors. That's OK.)
Then think about what level of risk may be posed by continuing the COVID vaccination and frequent booster regime that is still promoted by our government, and pushed by many companies on their employees.
I’m not telling you what to do. I’m just sharing some anecdotes.
I will add this: If you or someone you love gets a COVID vaccine or booster and shortly thereafter falls ill, take it seriously. If he goes to the hospital, make sure the health providers know he was recently vaxxed or boosted. There may be no treatment available to save him, but knowledge could at least shut down some diagnostic dead ends and limit the additional suffering caused by unnecessary procedures.
Discussion (48)
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I am very sorry for the death of your father in law. He sounds a treasured member of the family. It’s a real blow and a sad time for your family.
Thank you for taking the time and being willing to disclose the circumstances of his death. I take your information very seriously and believe your concerns and outrage to be credible. When someone close to us becomes seriously ill it’s hard to keep a clear head communicating with medical professionals. There are plenty of (anecdotal) examples of people struggling with the circumstances they find in emergency health situations. Your comments (anecdotes) may help another family ask important questions and push to provide timely pertinent information to the medical side. It seems lots of people are becoming a lot more aware of the changes in medical care. I’m sorry you had to face it first hand.
To others who might read this: On behalf of children of grown up parents - don't keep secrets from your kids. You’re not bothering them. It might make a real difference to care in the ER if one of them is able to speak knowledgeably to the ER doc about a parent’s current health events (like a vaccination or change in meds.) We are now the grown up parents. We remember being in the ER with a parent and wanting to be better advocates. So we have had that talk with our son and promised.
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Although daughter urging us to get the boosters before she comes for Tgiving my regular doc said no big deal given the mild symptoms of most folks getting Covid and daughter had it twice. Easy decision after reading this. Did get a flu shot. So will tell her I had a shot and everything ok
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First, I am very sorry for your Father-in-Law's death. Regardless of his age, your description of him makes his death seem untimely. There is another post on the member feed that gets into a discussion relevant to yours. It is shocking how in an age of nearly instantaneous global information exchange, there is so much ability for a relatively few persons to keep information from public view. Of course, in the cases you describe, we have no idea what caused the sudden deaths. We only have the anecdotal coincidence. But, personally, I gave up on these shots when I was told to get a booster less than 4 months after my two "vaccination" shots. At that point, I realized something was not right about our medical system, especially regarding COVID-19. There is more information now available, and, as such, there are alternate points of view in the public domain. But when science is politicized, it takes much longer for truth to be discovered.
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It reminds me of the day there was an obviously sick deer in the field next to us. It was just staggering around and this was when 'wasting disease' was getting a lot of publicity. I called the Animal warden who came and shot the deer.
I asked the warden if there had been an increase in reports of wasting disease and he said "no".
The real shock came when I asked if they would test the deer, the answer was they had no mechanism to do that!
Obviously, if they aren't taking the data, they have no reports of a problem. I think its the same with Covid side effects.
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I am saddened to hear this story of a lost life in your family.
I'm 85 and in good general health as I have always been. I have two medical issues that arose from sources not related to my recent, say last 30 years, of personal behavior. I had a bi-modal aortic valve, a congenital abnormality (tri-modal is normal), for which I have had two open-heart surgeries related to valve-replacement so I've been on cardio-related drugs since then. I recently was diagnose with cancer in my lower left mandible (jawbone) for which I had surgery and 35 targeted radiation treatments. That may be related to when I smoked for a period of 25 years which I quit in 1977. We won't evaluate that result until January.
I feel great, walk 3 to 4 miles regularly each day (I miss sometimes). When I visited the cardiologist earlier this month all vital signs were good including all the cholesterol readings being in acceptable ranges for the first time in 30 years.
I think I have a very strong and effective immune system that has help me avoid common illnesses during my lifetime. I grew up in the 1940s in a house with no indoor plumbing situated on a dirt road with a dirt yard, near a creek where I swam regularly, and I did all my play or leisure activities outside because the house was barely big enough to live in. I experienced all the childhood diseases for which they get shots today, I had a smallpox vaccination to start public school and I took an oral polio vaccine when I entered the Army in 1961. I've taken some flu shots but not every year.
I had grave suspicions regarding the Covid vaccines based initially simply on the fact that the government approved it on an emergency basis skipping the required protocols for normal approvals. Those suspicions have grown and now include suspicions of deliberate action by government and corporate officials to keep negative information from the public and institutional actions across all economic sectors to support that.
If I went into questions I have about motivations I will be a conspiracy theorist.
I have had no Covid shots and I don't plan to take any
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