An Alabama mom who firmly believed the coronavirus was a hoax regrets not getting her family vaccinated after Covid killed her autistic son.
Christy Carpenter said it was only after her 28-year-old son Curt became seriously ill - and she and her daughter caught the virus - that the family realized the importance of getting vaccinated.
The son died in early May two months after being diagnosed with coronavirus and spending his last weeks on a ventilator.
'It took watching my son die and me suffering the effects of Covid for us to realize we need the vaccine,' the heartbroken mom told The Washington Post.
'We did not get vaccinated when we had the opportunity and regret that so much now.'
Carpenter said she and her family had been hesitant to get a shot and had initially held the false belief that Covid-19 was a hoax.
'It took years to create other vaccines, and the coronavirus vaccine was created very quickly,' Christy Carpenter said. 'That made us very nervous.'
Her boy's haunting last words to his mom, Carpenter told the newspaper, were: 'This is not a hoax, this is real.'
Christy Carpenter (left), an Alabama mother whose son Curt (right) died from Covid-19, has said not getting her family vaccinated is her biggest regret
Coronavirus cases are on the rise in Alabama, which has one of the country's lowest vaccination rates with just 33.9 percent of those eligible having been fully vaccinated, according to figures from the Alabama Department of Public Health. Some 41.6 percent of those eligible have received at least one dose.
Scott Harris, chief executive of the Alabama Department of Public Health, told The Washington Post that the unvaccinated accounted for more than 95 percent of current coronavirus hospitalizations in the state.
Carpenter does not want others to repeat her mistake and hopes that Curt's death will remind people of the importance of getting vaccinated.
'If Curt were here today, he would make it his mission to encourage everyone to get vaccinated,' she told the newspaper.
'Cayla, his sister, and I are carrying out that mission in his memory.'
Carpenter described her son, who had
