A3
THE ASTORIAN • THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 23, 2021
A vaccine skeptic changes his outlook
“I think that was the fi rst
time that I really got wor-
ried,” he said. “I’ll be honest,
even being on the oxygen and
stuff I still was positive about
it. You know like, OK , couple
days I’m gonna be alright. No
big deal. Then that hit. I was
like, O h dang. This is real.
Like, O h okay. What’s gonna
happen next, you know?”
In the end, Stallsworth
avoided the ventilator, just
barely, he said, and fi nally was
strong enough to go home in
early August.
His father was not as
fortunate.
Ted Stallsworth, 52, of
Warrenton, died on Aug. 19.
Stallsworth got
sick, while his
father died
By PAT DOORIS
KGW
A Newberg man who was
once skeptical of the COVID-
19 vaccine now carries a dif-
ferent outlook after spending
10 days in the hospital with
the virus.
Brandon Stallsworth, 31,
grew up in Warrenton . Ear-
lier in the pandemic, he was
someone who’d say that you
don’t need a COVID shot.
“I did a physical in April.
And I came back really
healthy. Other than being
overweight, I was a very
healthy person, so I thought
OK , ‘I don’t have any under-
lying health issues what do
I need to worry about?’” he
said.
Stallsworth said he’s not
against vaccines, but he did
not trust the government in
the rollout of the COVID vac-
cines and worried how they
might aff ect him over the long
term.
“I was just kinda holding
off , waiting, wanting to see
what was going on. And like
I said, I didn’t know anyone
that had been sick. So why get
the vaccine?” he said.
In late July, Stallsworth ,
his wife, Debbie, and their
20-month-old son, Mason,
drove to California to visit her
family.
On the way back, Stalls-
worth started to feel sick.
Two days later, while
working outside at his plumb-
ing job, it got even worse. He
began to shiver in 90-degree
heat.
“It felt like my face was
trying to melt off my skull.
That’s the best way I can
describe it. It literally felt like
my head was trying to melt,”
he said.
He went to urgent care and
learned he had COVID.
The fi rst thing that ran
through his mind was not fear
for himself or his family.
“It was embarrassment!
‘Why not save yourself
from the pain?’
Brandon Stallsworth with his son.
I’m not gonna lie. It was the
fi rst thing that hit — ‘O h god,
I gotta face the music now. I
gotta face the music with all
these people. I told them and
now I’m sick. I’m that per-
son!’ I felt like it was almost
karma.”
‘Almost karma’
After telling many friends
not to bother with the vaccine,
the virus was spreading inside
his body.
“When I got home and
it was progressively getting
worse. I mean it was like min-
ute by minute. It was get-
ting worse very quickly,” he
remembered.
Two nights later, he could
not stop coughing and his
heart was racing. His wife
drove him to the nearby Prov-
idence hospital in Newberg.
“They did a chest X-ray
and the X-rays came back
normal,” Stallsworth said.
The hospital gave him a
monitoring system to use at
home. It allowed nurses to
check his health every four
hours. By that Saturday morn-
ing, they’d seen enough. They
called his house. The num-
bers were bad and he needed
‘WHY NOT DO IT? WHY NOT SAVE
YOURSELF FROM THE PAIN? I
WOULDN’T WANT THIS ON MY
WORST ENEMY. IT’S SO TERRIBLE
TO GO THROUGH WHAT I WENT
THROUGH. AND WHAT MY
FATHER — AND THAT’S THE
THING, IT’S NOT JUST ME AND MY
FATHER. IT’S THE REST OF THE
FAMILY. WHAT EVERYONE WENT
THROUGH. IT’S TERRIBLE!’
Brandon Stallsworth
to come in immediately.
Stallsworth’s wife , who
got vaccinated even though
her husband refused, felt
a mix of emotions as she
dropped him off at the hospi-
tal door, then watched with lit-
tle Mason to make sure he got
inside OK .
“You’re scared, you’re
worried, you’re nervous
exhausted too because you’re
not getting any sleep then
you’ve got the anger too.
Because you think to your-
self, why did you not get vac-
cinated? Why did you not do
this? Here you are so sick and
in the hospital!” Debbie said.
And it was not just Bran-
don fi ghting COVID.
Five days earlier his father,
Ted, was also hospitalized
with COVID and got very
sick very fast.
At the Newberg hospital,
Brandon quickly got a second
chest X-ray. This time it was
bad.
While the fi rst one had
mostly black over his lungs,
which is good, the new X-ray
showed lots of white.
He said the doctor told him
the white was COVID in his
lungs.
There were many things he
did not know about COVID.
He was learning fast.
“The COVID is like a plas-
ter. It aff ects your lungs worse
because you can’t cough it
up. It’s like concrete in your
lungs. And your lungs, from
what I understood, can’t
expand very well and can’t
absorb the oxygen like they’re
supposed to. So that’s why my
oxygen levels were dropping
— I couldn’t get the oxygen
to my body that I needed,”
Stallsworth said .
As he got worse, the New-
berg hospital transferred him
to Providence St. Vincent in
Portland in case he would
need a ventilator.
The reality of it all shocked
him.
“It’s crazy. One day you’re
sitting there talking to some-
body and the next day, you
can’t see them anymore,”
Brandon Stallsworth said,
slowly shaking his head and
blinking back tears.
Even with all that, Stalls-
worth won’t insist anyone
get the vaccine. But he now
thinks they should, and he’s
waiting for his body to heal
enough for him to get it, too.
“I wouldn’t push it on any-
body. But I would defi nitely
encourage them to have a sec-
ond thought about it. To really
maybe look into it,” he said.
He’s seen how bad things
can get and how the shot will
protect you.
One of his sisters, who is
vaccinated, also got sick.
“She was sick for a day
or two. She bounced back
no problem. And I’m like,
OK , why not do it? Why not
save yourself from the pain?
I wouldn’t want this on my
worst enemy. It’s so terrible
to go through what I went
through. And what my father
— and that’s the thing, it’s
not just me and my father. It’s
the rest of the family. What
everyone went through. It’s
terrible!”
Consult a
Researchers work to get more PROFESSIONAL
carbon out of atmosphere
LEO FINZI
By JES BURNS
Oregon Public Broadcasting
Over the next three years,
Oregon State University
researchers will be tack-
ling one of the biggest tech-
nological challenges of our
time — removing climate
change-causing carbon from
the atmosphere.
“We’re designing tech-
nologies, or chemistry in my
case, that will capture car-
bon dioxide just out of ambi-
ent air,” said Oregon State
chemist May Nyman. “A lot
of the focus so far on captur-
ing CO2 is at the source —
at power plants. It’s much
more challenging to cap-
ture it out of just ambient air
because it’s like 50 times less
concentrated.”
The
university
will
receive $1.6 million from the
U.S. Department of Energy
to develop new carbon-cap-
ture methods.
“I’m excited to be able to
work on what I consider one
of the biggest challenges and
most important problems
that should involve engi-
neers and chemists and sci-
entists from all disciplines,”
Nyman said.
In August, the United
Nations climate change
panel issued what’s been
referred to as a “code red for
humanity” — a true climate
emergency. The broad scien-
tifi c review found tempera-
tures over the past decade
are nearly 2 degrees Fahren-
heit higher than in pre-indus-
trial times. Continued warm-
ing will further intensify
‘I’M EXCITED TO BE ABLE TO
WORK ON WHAT I CONSIDER ONE
OF THE BIGGEST CHALLENGES
AND MOST IMPORTANT
PROBLEMS THAT SHOULD
INVOLVE ENGINEERS AND
CHEMISTS AND SCIENTISTS
FROM ALL DISCIPLINES.’
May Nyman | chemist
droughts, extreme precipita-
tion events and sea level rise.
A vast majority of the
warming is the result of
human activities, and most
of that is caused by the
release of carbon dioxide and
methane into the atmosphere
through burning fossil fuels
like coal, gasoline and natu-
ral gas.
If eff orts fail to reduce car-
bon emissions, the Intergov-
ernmental Panel on Climate
Change has said human-
ity would require “a greater
reliance on techniques that
remove CO2 from the air”
in order to drop temperatures
back down.
In the Pacifi c North-
west, the most visible form
of large-scale carbon cap-
ture comes from the natural
world. Oregon and Washing-
ton state forests suck up 7
million metric tons of carbon
per year as they grow.
Just this month, the larg-
est carbon-negative plant in
the world opened in Iceland.
The “Orca” takes CO2 out of
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the ambient air and stores it
underground. The plant will
remove 4,000 tons of CO2
from the atmosphere each
year.
Neither of these are going
to be nearly enough to stem
the tide of climate change,
according to climate-tech-
nology experts like Mah-
moud Abouelnaga, who’s
with the Center for Climate
and Energy Solutions.
“So there are diff erent
research projects going on
how to increase the effi ciency
of the process and how to
make it less energy inten-
sive,” he said. “Cost is a big
barrier for this technology.”
That’s where additional
research and development
eff orts, like Nyman’s, comes
in.
She and her team are
focusing on a group of ele-
ments found in the center of
the periodic table, known as
transition metals and which
have been shown to react
with carbon from the air,
turning it into a solid.
“It was just always this
kind of weird phenom-
ena that was an annoyance
because it made my reactions
misbehave,” said Nyman,
who fi rst noticed the process
back in 2009.
The reaction happens at a
4-to-1 rate — four CO2 mol-
ecules taken up by each tran-
sition metal ion.
“That’s a very good ratio
to have,” Nyman said.
But before the new chem-
istry is ready for prime time,
the chemists will have to
fi gure out how to control
the reactions. And even if
Nyman’s team is completely
successful on this front, she
says it will be many years
before it’s ready to deploy
outside the lab.
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