Respiratory therapist uses TikTok to urge younger generation to get vaccinated

DAYTON — Amid the recent surge in COVID-19 cases, a local respiratory therapist is pleading with the public to turn things around.

As a respiratory therapist, Erica Curtis, said she’s seeing younger and younger people ending up on ventilators and in some cases dying with COVID-19, overwhelmed and hoping to take save lives, Curtis is taking her message to Tik Tok.

It’s the first time Curtis has made a Tik Tok video, and she said she did it out of deep concern for the people she’s seeing end up in the hospital with COVID.

“We had a particularly rough night at work. We’d lost a few patients that were really young,” Curtis said.

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After a particularly difficult day at work Thursday, Curtis said she was really upset and thinking, “I don’t want anybody else to have to go through this. I don’t want to see anymore people my age or younger dying from this and if there’s any way to get the word out to have them help themselves, then I’m going to do it.”

In the Tik Tok video, Erica said young unvaccinated people are dying. “It just breaks my heart when people are fighting things that people are trying to put out there to protect them.”

Curtis said, in her experience, the majority of time, vaccinated people get to go home, but unvaccinated people do not.

“I have lost multiple patients under 40 and it’s heartbreaking every time,” Curtis said.

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Curtis closes out her Tik Tok video with this final plea – “Please, I beg of you, go get your vaccine. I beg of you. I don’t want to have to hold your hand as you’re dying because you realized way too later how important this was.”

According to Curtis, one of the best things everyone can do, especially young people, is get vaccinated. Her video has around 600 views on Tik Tok.

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