For weeks Michelle Zymet pleaded with her stepson not to go out with his friends and to always wear a face mask.
“This is not the time,” said the Florida woman, pleading with her to think of her father, who is part of the population at highest risk for COVID-19 because he is diabetic and overweight.
One afternoon in early June, the young man left the house against his stepmother’s will, met his friends, and took off his mask to eat and drink. A few days later, he began to show symptoms of a cold and one of the friends with whom he met informed him that he had been diagnosed with the new coronavirus. By then, the virus had already taken hold in the young man’s home.
Her father, John Place, 42, now battles the disease from the bed of a hospital intensive care unit.
The contagion among members of this family from Plantation, Florida is a good example of the authorities’ worst fears: that the recent spike in cases affecting the state’s younger residents ends up infecting more vulnerable and older people. .
“They don’t always listen. They may feel pressured by their friends, ”said Zymet, 42. “Perhaps they believe: ‘None of us is sick. We are fine’. They don’t understand that many of us are asymptomatic carriers of the virus. ”
The young man, who declined to speak to the press, told his father and stepmother that he initially believed he had a common cold and took over-the-counter medications. When he found out that his friend had tested positive for the new coronavirus, he did not give it much importance.
But one by one, his family members became ill, starting with his 14-year-old brother, who is also overweight and presented with lethargy, gasping and coughing.
Her 6-year-old sister barely had a runny nose. Her stepmother suffered from some pain, fever and chills. All tested positive, but only the father, Place, required hospitalization after four days of fever and incessant cough. He has been in the hospital for almost three weeks.
Because Place has been unable to go to work in his photography business, Zymet’s friends began raising funds for the family as they prepare to deal with the heavy medical expenses.
Zymet says she has been called a “terrible mother” and an “evil witch” for blaming her stepson, but she believes it was important to share her family’s story amid an increase in infections that were first detected among younger people.
Mayors of South Florida met with Governor Ron DeSantis earlier this week and informed him that youth meetings were a key factor in the increase in cases in the region in June.
Miami-Dade County Mayor Carlos Giménez said the youth celebrated the end of the school or university year, and that in some cases they joined the mass protests or simply attended a party at a house, in some forum clandestine or in a restaurant adapted as a bar in violation of confinement measures.
With so many multigenerational families in the community, contagion to older members seemed inevitable, Giménez said.
“After the young people started infecting each other, we now see the results as older people are being hospitalized,” Giménez said Tuesday. “It is just what we feared: that they infect their parents, that they infect their grandparents.”
On Wednesday, Florida surpassed 300,000 confirmed cases and averages about 96 deaths a day, more than triple that of a month ago.
Zymet and his family have been isolated at home, and Place was hooked up to a respirator for more than two weeks. She claims that her stepson has helped care for the children and researched the disease as she combines to work and be in constant communication with the hospital, doctors, and nurses.
The young generation “doesn’t realize it until it hits home,” said Zymet.
“This has definitely brought us together,” he added. “Eventually we could have caught it elsewhere. But unfortunately, the fact is that he brought it home.”
From our print edition today:
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