We want to be careful with our tone here because Blake Bargatze is a 24-year-old man who was the only one in his family who wasn’t vaccinated. It appears that Blake wasn’t politically opposed to the vaccine so much as scared of “side effects.” According to WSB-TV, he wanted to wait a couple of years to see how those side effects played out. Whether Blake is or is not an anti-Vax MAGA, he is learning the same lesson that anti-Vax MAGAs learn, eventually.

Yes, the vaccine can have some side effects, but COVID has direct effects and those effects hit more often and are vastly worse. Blake Bargatze spent months in intensive care in hospitals across three states. The 24-year-old needed a double lung transplant:

Fortunately, this is a smart family and they want people to hear Blake’s story:

“I just don’t ever want anybody else to go through this,” said his mother, Cheryl Nuclo, who said her son vaped regularly but was otherwise healthy before his infection. “No diabetes, no hypertension — just a 24-year-old kid.”

Exactly. It makes sense that in a couple of years, scientists will learn more about the side effects of the vaccine. It will also take a couple of years for scientists to learn exactly who is most susceptible to COVID, and especially the more deadly delta-variant.

There is a lot that anti-vax or even just “lazy vax” people can learn from Blake:

Bargatze posted on Facebook this week that all of his chest tubes had been removed and he’s able to breathe at least six hours without a ventilator, and he’s hoping to build up enough lung strength to go all day without help and be released from the hospital.

“Once I can hit a full 24 hours, I can leave the ICU and start working on talking/eating/drinking again,” Bargatze wrote. “My ultimate goal is to be able to walk again before my birthday in August.”

We should all remember Blake because when we see the next death total, Blake won’t be among the numbers. But there are millions of Blakes around the country, the long haulers, the people with scarred lungs, scarred hearts, people who haven’t tasted or smelled anything in six months, some with long term depression.

We suspect just about everyone reading this is vaccinated, most of us have teens already fully vaccinated. Perhaps pass the story forward to an anti-vaxxer near you. Maybe you’ll save someone from two-three months in the intensive care, double new lung transplants, and having to dream about walking in a couple of months.

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