It took just three weeks for 43-year-old Joshua Garza to go from healthy to needing a lung transplant. Back in January, Garza had a chance to get the COVID-19 vaccine. He passed on that chance because he felt he didn't need it. He ended up testing positive for COVID-19 in late January and by February 2nd his health had plummeted. How bad did it get? He fell while he was trying to walk and his wife ended up calling an ambulance to take him to the hospital.

Garza ended up at Houston Methodist where he was put on an extracorporeal membrane oxygenation machine, which helped pump and oxygenate his blood. Things were looking really bad for Garza and it got to the point he needed to a double lung transplant. Garza said:

It was quick, it was within three weeks, the lungs were already shot.

He added:

They're telling you your lungs are failing, so you don't know if you're going to go to bed tonight and wake up tomorrow.

Garza ended up on the lung transplant list and eventually went in for surgery on April 13th. Thankfully for Garza, the surgery was a success. He was eventually released from the hospital on May 27th, after many hours rehabilitating to regain his strength. Dr. Howard Huang, who is one of the doctors that treated Garza and it the medical director of lung transplantation at Houston Methodist said:

Mr. Garza is an extreme example of somebody who had complete lung failure, and there was really no other way out in the immediate future other than transplant.

Is this something that should be a concern for most people? Probably not as this is a rare occurrence. But it does show you just how quickly things can go wrong when something as simple as a vaccination is skipped.

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LOOK: Answers to 30 common COVID-19 vaccine questions

While much is still unknown about the coronavirus and the future, what is known is that the currently available vaccines have gone through all three trial phases and are safe and effective. It will be necessary for as many Americans as possible to be vaccinated in order to finally return to some level of pre-pandemic normalcy, and hopefully these 30 answers provided here will help readers get vaccinated as soon they are able.

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