One TikToker is reminding people that the pandemic is not yet over after her mother ended up in the ICU fighting for her life.
The United States has seen a sharp decrease in new COVID cases, after several months of the vaccine rolling out to eligible adults and teenagers across the country. While many people are still wearing masks around strangers and in large groups, the restrictions aren’t what they used to be, and life, in many ways, is galloping back towards normalcy.
But a decrease in cases isn’t a lack of cases. There are still around 11,000 new COVID-19 cases diagnosed every day in the U.S.—a striking difference from the 250,000 average touched upon in January, but still proof that the virus is still making the rounds.
Amanda, who goes by @iseeupan on TikTok, experienced this firsthand, when her mother, her sister, and her sister’s girlfriend all came down with COVID after a trip to Las Vegas.
They had “been locked up and careful this entire pandemic,” she says, but as soon as they “got comfortable and thought hey maybe we’re all out of the woods with this whole disease,” COVID struck.
A video posted to her account juxtaposes the upbeat excitement of a Vegas trip with the reality of what followed—Amanda’s mother, lying in the ICU, fighting the virus.
“Simply showing how from one second to the next, life can change dramatically,” the TikToker commented on the video.
While Amanda noted that her mother had not been vaccinated, vaccination alone cannot guarantee that a person won’t get COVID, although it would significantly decrease risk of hospitalization.
According to the CDC, around 3,900 people in the United States have been hospitalized with COVID after being fully vaccinated—though only around 2,900 of those experienced symptoms or were in the hospital specifically for COVID-19. Another 750 have died.
Those numbers are minuscule compared to the number of unvaccinated hospitalizations and deaths we’ve seen, proving that the vaccine does work, and that getting vaccinated is an effective way to protect against the virus for those who are able to do so.
But the numbers are also a reminder that, while vaccinated people are at significantly less risk than unvaccinated people for catching COVID, it wouldn’t hurt all of us to continue being cautious as we get back to our lives, especially as the delta variant spreads.
The Daily Dot reached out to Amanda for comment.
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