Fully vaccinated man dies of COVID-19, daughter says he was cautious

• A woman’s fully vaccinated father died from COVID-19. Doctors said the condition of the father could have been worse if he was not vaccinated at all.
• The father was mostly indoors and wore a mask, his surviving daughter said.

A woman’s fully vaccinated father died from COVID-19, with her saying she “can't imagine how much more he would have suffered if he had not gotten the vaccine.”

Yvonne Rodriguez saw her ill father, Patricio Elizondo, for the last time at the hospital. She remembered him struggling to breathe on his own, Newsweek reported.

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When Rodriguez saw an X-ray of her father’s chest it was explained that he contracted COVID-19 despite being fully vaccinated and being cautious.

Initially, she thought her father was experiencing a flare-up of congestive heart failure or a recurring infection. In addition to heart problems, Elizondo had diabetes, making him a greater risk of developing severe COVID-19.

Elizondo mostly stayed indoors and wore his mask, Rodriguez said, not knowing where he got the virus that ultimately messed up his lungs.

On Tuesday, Elizondo died after succumbing to lung complications related to having COVID-19.

According to Jan Patterson, an infectious disease specialist at UT Health, Rodriguez was right in her assessment, that her father would have suffered more if he had not been vaccinated.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) website, “There is some evidence that vaccination may make illness less severe for those who are vaccinated and still get sick.”

There are no vaccines that provide 100 percent protection against the virus, with the CDC stating that “there will be a small percentage of fully vaccinated people who still get sick, are hospitalized, or die from COVID-19.”

As Changing America previously reported, the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines are about 95 percent effective against symptomatic COVID-19; Johnson & Johnson is around 66 percent.

Most masks are deemed ineffective in the eyes of Michael Osterholm, an epidemiologist and director of the University of Minnesota Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy, he explained in an interview on CNN.

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