California man who mocked COVID-19 vaccine dies of virus

LOS ANGELES (AP) — A person who mocked COVID-19 vaccinations died this 7 days at a Los Angeles-place medical center right after contracting the virus.

Stephen Harmon was 34.

Harmon died on Wednesday at Corona Regional Clinical Middle, about an hour’s travel east of Los Angeles.

Stephen Harmon posted photographs of himself in his medical center bed, wrote that he had pneumonia and critically minimal oxygen concentrations and was heading to be intubated. In a tweet Wednesday, Harmon wrote: “Don’t know when I’ll wake up, be sure to pray,” KCBS-Tv set reported.

A few days just before his death, Harmon tweeted: “If you really do not have religion that God can heal me above your silly ventilator then retain the Hell out of my ICU space, there’s no home in here for worry or deficiency of faith!”

Right before his hospitalization, Harmon had manufactured enjoyable of vaccination attempts on social media.

“I got 99 challenges but a vax ain’t a person,” he stated in a tweet last month.

On July 8, he posted: “Biden’s door to door vaccine ‘surveyors’ definitely ought to be identified as JaCovid Witnesses. #keepmovingdork.”

Harmon’s demise was “unbelievably demoralizing,” Dr. Oren Friedman, who treats COVID-10 sufferers at Cedars-Sinai Clinical Center in Los Angeles, advised KCBS-Tv set. He mentioned the quantity of COVID-19 admissions experienced improved tenfold.

“Virtually each and every single particular person that is having unwell plenty of to be admitted to the hospital has not been vaccinated,” Friedman reported.

California has seen escalating numbers of COVID-19 infections, led by the remarkably transmissible delta variant that has proliferated given that the point out entirely reopened the financial state previous thirty day period. The broad greater part of new cases are among the unvaccinated people today, and overall health officials have pleaded for persons to get the photographs.

On Friday, the state Section of General public Well being described approximately 8,000 new circumstances a working day before and the testing positivity level over seven times had jumped to additional than 5{e32b4d46864ef13e127a510bfc14dae50e31bafd31770eb32fd579b90b39f021} following dipping below 1{e32b4d46864ef13e127a510bfc14dae50e31bafd31770eb32fd579b90b39f021} only a handful of weeks ago.

Los Angeles County, which has about a fourth of the state’s inhabitants, noted extra than 3,000 new instances for the to start with time due to the fact February. There have been 655 people today with COVID-19 in hospitals, a leap of more than 200 individuals in a week, according to county figures.

Harmon attended Hillsong Church in Los Angeles.

Founder Brian Houston referred to as him “one of the most generous persons I know.”

“As a church, our target is on the spiritual perfectly-getting of the people today in just about every of our community communities. On any health-related challenge, we strongly inspire all those in our church to stick to the steerage of their medical professionals,” Houston reported in a assertion to KCBS-Television set. “While quite a few of our employees, management and congregation have now acquired the COVID-19 vaccine, we recognize this is a private selection for each individual particular person to make with the counsel of healthcare gurus.”