LIBBY, Mont. — After nearly losing his life to COVID-19, Ben Fisher has changed his mind about getting vaccinated against the virus.
“The only protection we have is the vaccine,” said Fisher from St. Luke’s Boise Medical Center in Idaho on Oct. 27. “This virus will kill you, especially if you catch the wrong variant of it.”
Fisher, a 47-year-old deputy with the Lincoln County Sheriff’s Office, caught the delta variant of the coronavirus in late September. Days after going to a Libby emergency room with low oxygen levels, he was fighting to stay alive on a ventilator at the Boise Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Idaho. The battle left him intubated for 17 days, bed-ridden for 40 days and stripped 80 pounds off his stout 6-foot-4 frame, The Western News reported.
Complicating his coronavirus infection, Fisher suffered from suspected bacterial pneumonia and asbestosis, according to his wife Christina Fisher. During the darkest days of Ben Fisher’s hospitalization, nurses had trouble proning him, or turning him on his stomach to help distribute oxygen throughout his lungs.
Deputy recovering from COVID changes mind about vaccine (yahoo.com)