Vaccine hesitancy is one thing, but flatly refusing to get the jab in the middle of a deadly pandemic is ignorance on a whole new level. A Texas man learned the lesson the hard way, and now advocates for vaccines. A near-death experience for 43-year-old Joshua Garza of Texas was an eye-opener as he now realizes the importance of getting the jab at the earliest.
Garza was offered a chance to get vaccinated against COVID-19 in January, but he refused thinking he didn't need it. Not long after, he contracted the virus in January and his condition worsened, requiring hospitalization on February 2. Later, he was put on ECMO to pump and oxygenate his blood for him as a result of severely damaged lungs.
Speaking to ABC News about his experience, Garza said: "COVID ended up attacking my lungs. It was quick, it was within three weeks, the lungs were already shot."
Everything lined up in Garza's favour
Given the gravity of the situation, Garza needed his lungs replaced, which was his only shot in life. His name was put on a transplant list and after a long, painful wait, he had the rare surgery of a double lung transplant on April 13. The surgery went well, but the road to recovery was not an easy one. After several weeks in the hospital and being on life support for two months, Garza was finally discharged from the hospital on May 27.
"Mr. Garza is an extreme example of somebody who had complete lung failure, and there was really no other way out in the immediate future other than transplant," Dr. Howard Huang, the medical director of lung transplantation at Houston Methodist and one of the doctors who treated Garza, told ABC News.
Odds were in Garza's favour through it all. Despite being critically ill due to COVID in the peak of the pandemic in the US, he was able to get ECMO support in time and was later matched with a donor.
After having gone through it all, Garza now says, "If I knew what I know now. I would have definitely went through with the vaccination."
Vaccine could have prevented it
Health experts around the world have strongly recommended people get COVID vaccines at the earliest. Getting the masses inoculated is the only shot at ending the pandemic and bringing back normalcy around us. But not everyone share the same understanding about vaccines, as people rely on unverified and baseless claims to assume vaccines do not work and the body immunity will fight off any disease, be it even COVID. Unfortunately, the masses are misled with unscientific claims.
Had Garza got the vaccine in January, Huang said things wouldn't have gotten so worse, let alone to a point where he needed a transplant.
"The data that's now coming out suggests that the vaccines are very good at preventing severe illness. Even if he had ended up in a hospital, maybe it wouldn't have progressed all the way to complete lung failure that couldn't be salvaged without a lung transplant," Huang said, warning that Garza's outcome is extremely rare and he got lucky.
"It's much easier to get the vaccine than to go through something like this," Huang said of Garza's case. "He's extremely lucky. Most people in this situation don't make it to the transplant. You can't count on this outcome."
