Aimee Matzen, 44, finds herself in the Covid-19 intensive care unit at Our Lady of the Lake Regional Medical Center in Baton Rouge.

Louisiana woman regrets for not being vaccinated as she suffers from difficulty of breathing due to Covid-19 infection

Since masks and the vaccine have been weaponized and spoliticized, public health ads should feature Aimee Matzen along with other American's who survived Covid-19 to promote the vaccine.

By Edward Era Barbacena

Yet another American hospitalized with coronavirus is voicing regret for not getting vaccinated.

Sitting in her hospital room in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Aimee Matzen struggled to breathe as she described how exhausting it is to have Covid-19.

Aimee Matzen, an intensive care patient at Our Lady of the Lake Regional Medical Center in Baton Rouge, was interviewed by CNN.

"What does it feel like to have COVID?" CNN correspondent Miguel Marquez ask.

"Exhausting. Extremely frustrating. Tiring," she said while she struggled to breathe. "And the fact that I am here now, I am furious with myself."

"Why?" Marquez ask.

"Because I was not vaccinated," she replied.

Matzen, 44, finds herself in the Covid-19 intensive care unit at Our Lady of the Lake Regional Medical Center in Baton Rouge. She is receiving oxygen treatments and hopes she stays well enough to avoid getting hooked up to a ventilator.

"I don't want anyone else winding up like me. Especially because the vaccine is so easy to get now," she said. "I have this feeling ... if I was vaccinated, I wouldn't be hospitalized."

Louisiana stands among those hardest hit by the most recent rise in cases, driven in large part by the Delta variant.

The state has the highest 7-day average of new cases per-capita in the country, at 77 cases reported per 100,000 residents each day over the past week, according to a CNN analysis of data from Johns Hopkins University.

Louisiana's vaccination rate is among the lowest in the country, with just 37% of residents fully vaccinated as of Wednesday, according to data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It's the fifth lowest in the country, and Louisiana is one of six states that has less than 38% of residents fully vaccinated.

The state's largest healthcare system, Ochsner, has seen a 700% increase in Covid-19 patients over the last month and a 75% increase in the last week, officials said during a news conference on Wednesday.

And the vast majority of those patients -- 88%, according to Ochsner Health CEO Warner Thomas -- are unvaccinated.

"This is absolutely disproportionately hitting folks that are unvaccinated," Thomas said. "Those are the folks that in a very high majority we're seeing coming to the hospital."

Matzen told CNN she was not opposed to getting vaccinated -- she just hadn't gotten around to it. Every time she planned to get inoculated, "something would come up," she said.

"I have this feeling ... if I was vaccinated, I wouldn't be hospitalized," Matzen said.

Source: CNN