A 31-year-old man recovers at a Missouri hospital having a 20% chance of survival; Vaccine avoided, citing ‘strong conservative family’

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OSAGE BEACH, Mo. (AP) — Daryl Parker has been enthusiastic about the COVID-19 vaccine, and so have his relatives. Then 10 of them fell ill and Parker, just 31, ended up in the ICU in Missouri fighting for his life.

It’s a scenario played out over and over at Lake Regional Hospital in Osage Beach, where 22 people died of the virus in the first 23 days of July. Many other hospitals across Missouri are fighting the same battle, as a result of a rapidly spreading delta outbreak invading a state with low vaccination rates in the country, especially in rural areas.

The Associated Press has been allowed access to the interior of Regional Lake, where just two months ago, no one had been hospitalized with the virus. Doctors, nurses and staff at the hospital in the heart of the Lake of the Ozarks are now dealing with an onslaught of COVID-19 patients — some of whom are struggling to survive.

We’ve seen a huge increase in the number of delta viruses here. “A lot of admissions, and a lot of people are very sick and dying,” said Dr. Harbaksh Sangha, chief medical officer of Lake Regional. “So as a human being very frustrated, but as a doctor we just take care of whatever we get.”

Only 47.5% of Missouri residents have started the vaccination, about 10 percentage points lower than the country as a whole. About Osage Beach, a city of about 5,000 people across two counties, state data shows that only 38.6% of Camden County residents and 26.7% in Miller County have started the process.

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Parker, of Branson, about 120 miles southwest of Osage Beach, understands the hesitation.

“I was very opposed to getting vaccinated,” Parker said, struggling to breathe. “Just because we are a strong conservative family.”

In the United States, many people considered politically and socially conservative have been more reluctant to vaccinate—so much so that in Missouri, religious leaders have joined in efforts to encourage the injection. Meanwhile, the summer outbreak was so alarming that the Democratic-led city and county of St. Louis and Kansas City reinstated mandates for masks.

The virus was recently transmitted to the extended Parker family. Not only did he and his wife Billy have it, but eight other relatives got it too.

Parker became so ill that his wife took him to the emergency room in Branson. He was sent home with oxygen, but his condition worsened.

With Branson Hospital reaching its limit of COVID-19 patients, doctors have called dozens of hospitals across the state. They were all in amplitude. Regional Lake was nearly full, too, but Dr. Joe Sohall, a pulmonologist and critical care specialist, found a bed for Parker.

He arrived in critical condition. He was put on a ventilator, and Parker was given a 20% chance of survival.

“The doctor told me he would let my wife and child in so I could say my goodbye because he didn’t think I would continue working,” Parker said. In those conversations, he told his wife and son, 6-year-old Brody, that he loved them and “won’t give up.”

Slowly, Parker began to recover. Sohal is optimistic but said Parker, who has been in hospital for three weeks, hasn’t made it out of the woods.

This is when it will either get a lot better or get a lot worse,” Sohal said.

The Lake of the Ozarks area attracts nearly 5.5 million visitors annually and made national news early in the pandemic, when large crowds were seen ignoring social distancing while partying at bars and pools.

This mentality still exists at Osage Beach. Few people – locals or visitors – wear masks, even in crowded places.

If tourists get sick, they take it home with them. Most of the COVID-19 patients in Lake Regional are local residents, or people like Parker who have been transferred from other hospitals, Sohal said.

Statewide, the number of hospitalized COVID-19 patients has doubled since the beginning of June, and the number of ICU patients has more than tripled. Since June 7, Lake Regional has received 125 virus patients. As of Tuesday, it had 21 patients with COVID-19, including eight in intensive care and four on ventilators. Sohal himself has signed about half a dozen death certificates over the past week.

Sohal said many patients are now younger — in their 20s, 30s or 40s — and sicker, often with digestive upsets as well as breathing problems.

Hospital staff are tired. Among those feeling stressed is ICU nurse Chris Murphy, who spends most of his day running from room to room.

“It is devastating people and families,” Murphy, a former combat medic, said of the virus. “You have to take precautions.”

Sohal said nearly everyone in the hospital is unvaccinated. Patients said they were concerned about the side effects of the vaccine, or felt the vaccines were rushed and taken up quickly.

Both Daryl and Billy Parker plan to get vaccinated once he recovers.

Daryl said his wife and son are the reason he’s fighting so hard.

On a sweltering day, they sat outside the ICU on lawn chairs, looking at Daryl through the glass. Every now and then, Brody would walk to the window and wave to his father, who smiled and waved back. Billy used a ballpoint pen to write “I love you” backwards on the glass so that her husband could read it.

“I never want to do this again,” she said, “and if it means getting a vaccine to prevent something like that, that’s what I’ll do.”

Read on: No deaths, few hospitalizations, but 74% of those who test positive in Massachusetts outbreak have been vaccinated, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

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