A Florida father is fighting for his life after contracting his son’s coronavirus, which he tested positive after ignoring his parents’ advice to stay home and not meet with friends.
Plantation’s John Place is currently in the intensive care unit at Westside Regional Medical Center, where he was put on a ventilator for more than two weeks.
The 42-year-old man and his family tested positive for COVID-19 last month after their 21-year-old son went out with friends one night and unknowingly brought the respiratory virus to his home.
However, Place was the only one who required hospitalization after four days of fever and non-stop coughing. He has now been in the hospital for almost three weeks.
His wife Michelle Zymet said he had repeatedly begged his stepson, who was not mentioned, to avoid dating friends and always wearing a mask.
John Place, 42, of Plantation, Florida, has been in the intensive care unit at Westside Regional Medical Center for almost three weeks after becoming seriously ill with COVID-19.
Place (left) and his family tested positive last month after their 21-year-old son unknowingly brought the virus home after hanging out with friends.
“He always assured me:” Don’t worry, mom. I’m doing everything right, relax, relax. “You know what these kids are like, so I trusted him, ” Zymet told 7 News Miami.
She said she begged him to think about his father, who is at increased risk for severe COVID-19 disease because he is overweight and diabetic.
But despite her pleas, he came out against her wishes one June night, when she met up with friends and took off her mask while eating and drinking.
Days later, he felt cold symptoms and a friend at the meeting told him that he had tested positive for coronavirus. By then, he had already settled in the young man’s house.
“You let your guard down just once, that’s all it takes,” added Zymet. ‘You come home and infect the whole house.’
The spread of the disease among family members highlights the result feared by authorities who feared that the recent surge in cases involving younger Floridians would spread to older and more vulnerable people.
‘They don’t necessarily listen. It could be peer pressure, ” said Zymet.
“Maybe they think,” None of us is sick. We’re fine. “They don’t understand that many of us are asymptomatic and positive carriers of the virus. ‘
Place, who is overweight and diabetic, required hospitalization after four days of fever and non-stop cough.
Zymet’s friends have launched a GoFundMe campaign to raise funds for the family as they prepare to handle heavy medical bills
The young man, who did not want to speak to the media, had told his father and stepmother that he initially thought he had a common cold and took over-the-counter medications.
When he found out that his friend tested positive for coronavirus, he still didn’t think he had it.
But family members began to get sick one by one, starting with their 14-year-old brother, who is also overweight and had wheezing, coughing, and lethargy.
The six-year-old sister only had a runny nose. The stepmother was in pain, with a fever and chills.
Since then, Zymet and her children have started to recover from the virus, but her husband remains in serious condition in the ICU.
Since Place can’t work in his photo booth business, Zymet’s friends have launched a GoFundMe campaign to raise funds for the family as they prepare to handle heavy medical bills.
Zymet said she was called an “awful mother” and an “evil witch” for blaming the stepson, but said she thought it was important to share her family’s story amid a spate of infections first detected among young people.
Wife Michelle Zymet (left) says she had begged her stepson to be cautious of his father, but he still came out against her wishes.
About 95 percent of hospitals in the city of Miami have reached capacity, Mayor Francis Suárez said Thursday.
Mayors of South Florida met with Florida Governor Ron DeSantis earlier this week, telling him that youth meetings were a key factor in the increase in cases that arose in their region in June.
Miami-Dade County Mayor Carlos Giménez said the youth celebrated the end of school or university, in some cases joining street protests and otherwise simply meeting at house parties, places Subways and restaurants that became bars late at night in violation of the rules.
With so many united and multigenerational families in the community, the spread to older family members seemed inevitable, he said.
“Since young children started infecting each other, we now see the results as more older people enter the hospital,” Giménez said Tuesday.
“Exactly what we feared: that they would take it to their parents, that they would take it to their grandparents.”
On Wednesday, Florida broke the 300,000 confirmed coronavirus case mark and has been averaging about 96 deaths per day, more than triple that of a month ago.
Zymet and his family have been isolating themselves at home, and Place was on a respirator for more than two weeks.
She says her stepson has been helping care for the younger children and researching the disease while juggling work between calls to the hospital, nurses and doctors.
She said the younger generation “won’t know until I get home.”
“This has definitely brought us together,” he added. ‘We could have contracted this disease elsewhere. But it is the unfortunate truth that brought him home.
.
