"More Concerned With Popularity and Votes Than Lives": In Texas Obituary, Widow Blisters Trump and Texas Governor Greg Abbott For Husband's COVID-19 Death
August 4th 2020
President Donald J. Trump gives a thumbs-up as he disembarks Air Force One at Tampa International Airport in Tampa, Fla (The White House)
By davidkc (of the Daily Kos community)
David W. Nagy suffered a painful, agonizing death from COVID-19 at age 79 in Jefferson, Texas in July. In a powerful obituary that has since gone viral, Nagy’s wife Stacey blasts Donald Trump and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott for their incompetent response to the COVID-19 pandemic, and blames them for her husband’s death.
“Family members believe David’s death was needless,” his wife, Stacey Nagy, wrote. “They blame his death and the deaths of all the other innocent people, on Trump, Abbott and all the politicians who did not take this pandemic seriously and were more concerned with their popularity and votes than lives.”
Stacey Nagy also blasted people who don’t wear masks, describing them in the obituary as “ignorant, self centered and selfish people” who ignore medical professionals and instead believe that “their ‘right’ not to wear a mask was more important than killing innocent people." Amen to that.
David Nagy was predisposed to catching the coronavirus, having a bad heart, high blood pressure and diabetes. So after he suffered some falls and was taken to a hospital for treatment, Stacey and David’s son decided it would be safer for David to recuperate at a nursing home rather than at home. Stacey was worried about catching the virus while at the grocery store and bringing it home to her susceptible husband. She mistakenly thought that her state would be doing everything it could to ensure that nursing homes and other healthcare facilities were as safe as possible.
David started feeling ill in early July. He tested positive for the virus along with at least 16 other patients at his nursing home. His health declined quickly.
“Here I thought I was doing the right thing keeping him safe by keeping him there and he ends up getting it,” Stacey said. “It was devastating to me, and to say I was angry is putting it mildly. And so that’s why I blame all these other people because the disease did not have to get out control like it is.”
It’s heartbreaking to read about David’s final days. The nursing home forbade visitors, so every week Stacey would try to talk to her husband through the window in his room. He spent the last two weeks of his life on a ventilator. When his kidneys started failing, Stacey visited him one last time.
Stacey spent her final moments with David behind another glass window. But this time David was unconscious, unable to reach out and perform their ritual kiss goodbye. When most of the hospital staff were gone, a nurse told her she could crack open the door and speak to her husband.
“I told him I loved him and kept begging him to fight,” Stacey said. “I thought if he fought hard enough he could overcome it. I kept telling him ‘You have to fight so you can come home.’ ”
Stacey says that she wrote the obituary as a way to overcome a feeling of helplessness that she had after her husband’s death. She has been completely surprised by the widespread, positive response to the obituary, and if nothing else she hopes it will encourage more people to wear masks.
“Dave did everything he was supposed to do, but you did not,” Stacey wrote in the obituary. “Shame on all of you, and may Karma find you all!”
Thank you Stacey Nagy for turning a feeling of helplessness into a powerful response to the dereliction of duty by Donald Trump and all of his toadies like Abbott that is resulting in the deaths of so many innocent people. Let us all use the power that we have to do the same. November can’t come soon enough.
Posted with permission