Antwion “Busta” Ball, 43, was the kind of teacher who altered the course of his students' lives. “He told Black boys you can be somebody,” his sister, Shavone Ball, told The Baltimore Sun. “He told them, once you have an education, it can’t be taken away.” During a candlelight vigil for the educator Thursday, many of his students couldn't speak "it was so painful," said Bettye Blaize, an administrator Ball worked with for Cambio Group educational consultants.
Ball died on November 27 at the Comfort Suites Hotel in the Inner Harbor after suffering from COVID-19 complications and diabetes, The Baltimore Sun reported and Wylie Funeral Homes confirmed. After serving as a public school teacher in Baltimore, he was teaching virtually at a school in Harlem when he died. He had contracted the virus about three weeks ago and since then taken multiple trips to the hospital, his cousin, Corey Johnson, told CBS affiliate WJZ. “People need to understand if you’re not on your death bed and having respiratory issues, they send you back home,” Johnson said.
Maryland reported a record 3,792 new coronavirus cases Friday, and the state's two-week average of new deaths each day spiked to 28 Friday, up from eight on November 8, The Baltimore Sun reported. Ball had part of his foot amputated in one of several surgeries, his cousin said. “So his body just wasn’t equipped to battle COVID. He tried to fight it, but it just was too much,” Johnson said. “He loved Baltimore, and he left a legacy. We’re going to miss him.”
Although President Donald Trump’s administration officials indicated a speedy timeline for coronavirus vaccines, President-elect Joe Biden pointed out there is “no detailed plan that we’ve seen” for rolling out the vaccine. Dr. Monclef Slaoui, chief science adviser of the Trump administration’s vaccine program Operation Warp Speed, said Sunday on CNN’s State of the Union that residents of long-term care facilities would receive vaccinations first either by the end of December or by mid-January. “By end of the month of January, we should already see quite a significant decrease in mortality in the elderly population,” Slaoui said.
Biden’s transition team hasn’t been briefed, but Slaoui said he thinks he has a meeting planned later this week. The Trump administration indicated 100 million doses of the Pfizer vaccine, which reported 95% efficacy in trials, would be possible by December, but that number has dropped to 40 million, according to The New York Times. “This is not an engineering problem. These are biological problems, they’re extremely complex,” Slaoui said. “There will be small glitches.”
Johnson warned the public against downplaying the effects of the coronavirus pandemic. He said Ball was fighting with the virus. “And what I want people to know is you’ve got to take this seriously,” Johnson told WJZ.
Ball's funeral is planned to begin at 11 AM on December 15 at Wylie Funeral Home. His family is raising money for funeral expenses, with Brian Henderson, Ball’s friend and family member, organizing a GoFundMe page.
"As for right now, there's nothing we can do to bring him back,” Henderson told WJZ. “For those people who are out there that may wonder what COVID has done to a lot of these communities, the proof is right there.”