Sebastian Feary, a 36-year-old Moanalua native, was unvaccinated because he was unsure about the health and safety of taking the vaccine. But before he could make a decision to get vaccinated, he caught Covid-19 around late August.

His ordeal, of spending eight days at the Pali Momi and Straub Medical Center getting treatment for Covid, has served as a warning for others who are unvaccinated.

“Being in there was some of the worst pain I felt my entire life, and I just felt so exhausted to the point were I was scared for my own life,” said Feary in an interview on Sept. 11.

As of Sept. 24, 67.2% of Hawaii’s eligible population is fully vaccinated against Covid-19, according to the state’s Department of Health. This leaves Hawaii a little behind the 70% benchmark given by President Joe Biden and Dr. Anthony Fauci as an important one to achieve herd immunity. However, many of the unvaccinated are hesitant to follow that advice.

Feary said he was hearing a lot of conspiracy theories on social media while he was in the hospital being treated for Covid. Early in the pandemic, then-President Donald Trump encouraged people to take hydroxychloroquine as a treatment against Covid. Studies have shown that medicine has not shown enough scientific evidence to properly treat against Covid-19. Recently, Ivermectin, an animal dewormer, has become the hot topic to counter the virus, but still has shown little evidence in proving to work as a proper drug to fight against Covid.

“I didn’t want to dive into too much of that stuff,” said Feary. “People outside were telling me to tell doctors what they should treat me with, and I didn’t feel like it was my place to tell my doctor what they should be treating me with to fight against Covid.”

Feary listed the medications he did take during his time at the hospital. While in the ICU, he was given Remdesivir antiviral IV, vitamin drip IV, codeine cough medicine, blood thinners, and other steroid pills for his lungs.

“Initially I wasn’t sure what to expect, I kind of felt objective to the whole social media craze, and I was reading about how people were being treated, and how bad the experience was for people that had Covid being unvaccinated,” said Feary, a father to three children. “But when I got there, I was treated with nothing but respect and pure professionalism from the medical workers and doctors at the hospital. Regardless of my status being vaccinated or not, they treated me as someone who needed help. They took me in and nursed me back to protocol [normal].”

Some of the procedures the doctors told Feary would ease some of the pain was by finding better ways to create less stress on the lungs to breathe correctly. However, one of the other illnesses he mentioned while he was battling against Covid-19 was pneumonia.

“One of the things they told me to do was lay prone on my stomach for a couple of hours because, it opens up the lungs and it gives your lungs a chance to expand a lot better and breathe better rather than laying down on your back,” said Feary. “Having done all that, combined with the medication the doctors prescribed me is how I got out of the hospital.”

Now that he is healthy and able to see his wife Carly and three kids, Aurora, Phoenix, and Flash, Feary plans to get vaccinated. He has been quite outspoken about the ordeal he had to go through because he was unvaccinated, and he’s encouraging others to trust the advice these medical professionals are telling the public.

During this fall semester, all Chaminade students must be fully vaccinated in order to attend in-person classes. If students don’t choose to be vaccinated or have medical and religious exemptions, CUH requires them to have a negative test results weekly from Covid-19 in order to attend in-person classes. According to Chaminade, 85% of CUH students are fully vaccinated and 96% of CUH employees are fully vaccinated.