39-year-old recovering from COVID-19 warns young Americans to take virus seriously
Benjamin King spent five days in the hospital after taking a cruise with his wife Kristen.
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A 39-year-old man recovering from COVID-19 is warning young Americans to take the virus seriously.
“I just feel lucky to be here,” Benjamin King said on “Fox & Friends” on Monday.
He added, “If you have anything to live for, family, friends, loved ones, then don't take the risk. It's not worth it.”
Speaking from Texas, King said he started feeling sick while on a five-day cruise with his wife Kristen, who is a registered nurse.
“As soon as we got on the cruise, [a] cruise out of New Orleans, about a day before we docked, I told my wife I felt like I had tickle in my throat, maybe some allergies,” King said.
“Driving home back to New Orleans we were both just exhausted. I actually got a little bit better, but my wife got sick, [she] tested negative for COVID and then ended up testing positive for the flu,” he continued. “A week later I lost my sense of smell and taste and then the next day it just hit me like a freight train.”
King said his “fever was out the roof” and he ended up going to the hospital.
“They sent me home and then 15 hours later I was back in the hospital with pretty severe pneumonia on my left lung,” he said.
His wife Kristen said she was terrified. She said she tried to take care of him at home, but his pneumonia progressed and his temperature was almost 104 degrees.
“The pain was so severe. He was barely talking to me so I knew at that point we needed to take him into the ER so he could get proper care,” she said.
Describing the symptoms King said, “I couldn't breathe, my cough was terrible. I felt I pulled a chest muscle. My entire body, including my teeth, hurt. I was throwing up. I had diarrhea, my temperature was really high in the hospital. Those first two nights I was worried I wouldn’t make it out of there.
“I was only allowed to have a sheet. They had ice on my head, under my armpits and my groin. It was very, very scary time,” he continued.
When the novel coronavirus first started to spread from its origins in China earlier this year, the widely preached consensus was that it did not infect – or at least did not gravely harm – children and young adults. However, public health professionals are now raising the alarm that such information provided a dangerously false sense of security and invincibility.
"It is a misconception that children can't get critically ill. Children are getting sick, but they're not getting as severe cases," Dr. John Whyte, Chief Medical Officer at WebMD, told Fox News. "The highest rate of severe cases and deaths remains the elderly. But what we are learning is that everyone is at risk."
“We took the cruise when things were just coming out, things really developed in the world as we were on the boat,” King said. “But now with all the information we know, there is no excuse to be out there and not doing the things that we need to do to help ourselves as a community and as a nation.”
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A study released late last month by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) concluded that of the 4,226 coronavirus – officially termed COVID-19 – cases reported in the United States as of March 16, 29 percent were of those in the 20 to 44 age range. And in New York City, now the international epicenter of the pathogen, around half the confirmed infections were of individuals aged between 18 and 44.
Fox News’ Hollie McKay contributed to this report.
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