Who was Olivia Guidry? Louisiana nurse who tweeted against vaccine dies of Covid-19
A nurse in Lafayette, Louisiana, reportedly died of complications from Covid-19 on July 10. The 24-year-old Louisiana native worked in the emergency room at Ochsner Lafayette General Medical Center. However, as per news reports, she had in the past shared a number of anti-vaccine opinions.
One such anti-vaccine tweet from July 26, 2020, reported by news websites says: "This vaccine has been released using recombinant DNA technology faster than any vaccine in the world. It manipulates your DNA at the tiniest molecular level. Do. Not. Get. It. It's not safe." The Twitter account no longer exists.
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Vaccines have been mandatory for years, so why the drama over Covid-19?
Who is Olivia Guidry?
Guidry, who graduated from LSU Alexandria with a nursing degree, was taking pre-med courses at LSU Eunice and hoped to go to medical school. Al Patin, the Chief Executive Officer at Ochsner Lafayette General Medical Center, said that her colleagues were “saddened” by the news, adding that “she was a beloved member of our hospital family and dedicated to taking care of every patient who entered our emergency department.”
Patin, however, said that while many reports have stated that Olivia died due to complications from Covid-19, “the cause of her untimely death is unclear at this time and will be determined by an autopsy, with results not expected for several days. The appropriate officials have been made aware of her case.”
As per Heavy, Guidry’s parents and boyfriend are also battling the coronavirus, as mentioned in social media posts from friends and family members. Guidry’s family members have not said if she had changed her views on the coronavirus vaccine prior to her death or if she was vaccinated against Covid-19.
As per Raw Story, Guidry posted July 11, 2020, on Twitter: "Am I the only one thinking they are trying to see how much they can control us??? We are a straight up social experiment."
Guidry reportedly died in the intensive care unit at Ochsner Lafayette General Medical Center after battling Covid-19 complications for several days, according to now-private Facebook posts from her sister. She was moved to the ICU on July 7 after her fever spiked and she suffered a seizure. She was intubated that day. Her chest x-ray, per her sister, showed minor pneumonia.
Her sister, Brittany Smith, as per reports, said she was then placed into a medically induced coma on the morning of July 8 because she was showing signs of brain damage, swelling, and fluid on the brain. An infectious disease specialist believed Guidry was in a cytokine storm and she was treated with high-dose steroids and antibodies. Heavy also reported that according to posts from 2019 on Guidry’s Facebook page, she had a pre-existing heart condition.
Reportedly, Ochsner Health, the New Orleans-based company that owns the hospital where Guidry worked, has not mandated that its 30,000 employees be vaccinated. However, Chief Human Resources Officer Tracey Schiro said that 55 percent of employees had been vaccinated as of April 2021, saying, “I do think those have been successful. I know we have a high percentage of employees vaccinated compared to some of our peers across the country, so I think those targeted communications and having open sessions for employees to ask questions of physicians and experts in different areas has been very beneficial in getting a majority of our employees vaccinated.”
As per a July 11 report on The Acadiana Advocate, in the past two weeks, Louisiana, along with Mississippi, Arkansas, and Tennessee, had seen cases increase around 100 percent. Lafayette Parish and the state, per the report, had a vaccination rate of about 36 percent, below the national vaccination rate of nearly 50 percent. In Lafayette Parish, there have been more than 24,000 positive Covid cases and 294 have died, according to the Louisiana Department of Health.