Unvaccinated mother dies of Covid two weeks after husband

“Please make sure my kids get vaccinated.”

Those were some of the last words of Lydia Rodriguez, a mother of four in Texas, who died of Covid on Monday after deciding not to get the vaccine. Two weeks earlier, her husband, Lawrence, died of Covid in the same hospital, having finally requested a vaccine right before being put on a ventilator.

“Lydia has never really believed in vaccines,” Dottie Jones, Lydia’s cousin and a neonatal nurse, told The Washington Post. “She believed that she could handle everything on her own, that you didn’t really need medicine.”