A British man said he lost his health-obsessed brother and both their parents from COVID-19 within a week of each other — blaming “misinformation” for leaving them fearful of the vaccine.
Francis Goncalves told Wales Online that dad Basil, 73, is thought to have first got infected on July 6 when he went to a hospital for kidney stones while with his wife and their other son in Portugal.
Two days later, the dad had a family meal — which is when he likely also infected his wife, Charmagne, 65, and their son Shaul, 40, who lives with his girlfriend in the European nation.
“They started to feel very ill that weekend,” said Goncalves, who had been awaiting a negative COVID test before flying from his hometown to see his sick family.
By the following Saturday — as he still awaited permission to fly — Goncalves said he got the call that his brother had died, despite him being the “healthiest person” he knew, he said.
“If he wasn’t working out in the gym or running, he was going on walks. He hadn’t drunk in 15 years and ate a whole-foods, plant-based diet,” he said of the brother who was his “best friend.”
Their father — who by then had already been placed in a medically induced coma — then died on Tuesday, July 20, and their mother four days later, exactly a week after her son.
Goncalves blames the devastation on his family refusing to get vaccinated.
“They got caught up in a lot of the anti-vaccination propaganda that’s going around,” Francis said. “It preys on people who are afraid and they fall into the trap,” he said.
“I’ve spoken to so many people who are terrified of the vaccine and it costs lives,” he warned.