Ron Lemon

By April of this year Ron Lemon, pastor at Koinonia Christian Fellowship in Jamestown, was fully vaccinated against COVID-19. By July, he was confirmed to have tested positive for the virus.

Lemon is certain he caught COVID-19 at a campground, where 26 others also ended up testing positive. According to Lemon, three of those people have now passed away, and there is currently a young boy who has been in and out of the hospital as a result.

For Lemon, the symptoms from the virus were mild; however, he believes had he not been vaccinated, his experience could have been much worse.

“I was very surprised that I got it,” Lemon said. “After I was fully vaccinated I rather foolishly thought of myself as almost bulletproof and that I wouldn’t get it. Because of that I was probably not as cautious as I could’ve been, because I thought I couldn’t get it and I couldn’t give it. I was contagious when I got it though, and I also spread it to some of my family members.”

When first deciding to get vaccinated, Lemon watched the information coming from both sides of the debate, stating that he did not know who to trust at the time.

“I finally just prayed and decided that if I trust God to protect me from COVID, then I can trust him to protect me from anything potentially harmful in the shot,” Lemon said.

He added that he has had Christian friends who have died because of COVID, along with others who have not gotten vaccinated who then got COVID. From what he has seen, those who still got the virus after getting vaccinated handled it much better than those who decided not to.

While his symptoms included a fever and cold — and only lasted for about four days — it was still around a 10-day recovery process.

“It wasn’t just after the symptoms were gone that I was like, ‘Oh I’m all better now,'” Lemon said. “It was really somewhere between day 15 or 20 that I woke up and said, ‘Oh, I feel better.'”

Lemon recommends getting vaccinated, especially for those 50 years or older, but says that he supports people’s right to choose.

“Of course, everyone has the right to choose for themselves, but you are taking a chance either way,” he said. “Recently, I saw a study done by the Sarasota Medical Center that said 89% of people currently in the hospital suffering from COVID are not vaccinated. Again, everyone has the right to choose for themselves, and I fully support that, but it seems to me that those who are not vaccinated are the current ones who are struggling the most.”

Lemon mentioned that other members of his family have been vaccinated and have all still come down the virus but with much lighter symptoms and a quicker recovery time. He emphasized that the vaccine helps, even if someone still contracts the virus.

“You really have nothing to lose,” Lemon said.

38 NEW CASES REPORTED

The county Health Department recorded 38 new COVID-19 cases and another virus-related death. The information, collected Monday, pushes the total to 10,045 to date in the county, along with 164 deaths.

There are currently 272 active cases, eight people with the virus in the hospital and 500 in quarantine. To date there have also been 9,609 recoveries.

Of the new cases noted Tuesday, 15 come from people living in the Jamestown zip code; four each in Dunkirk and Fredonia; three in Westfield two each in Clymer, Conewango Valley, Kennedy and Mayville; and one each in Forestville, Irving, Lakewood and Sinclairville.

There have been 701 new cases reported in the month of August.