Hospital employee fired for ‘intentionally’ ruining 500 doses of vaccine(washingtonpost.com)
washingtonpost.com
Hospital employee fired for ‘intentionally’ ruining 500 doses of vaccine
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/12/31/covid-vaccines-destroyed-wisconsin-hospital/#click=https://t.co/F4ZJXST2tX
67 comments
It's not just private property. It's the bottleneck for ending suffering for billions of people.
I'm in constant constant stress about getting the virus because I breathe harder than most people.
Young people are in stress because they are jobless.
Old people are scared of both dieing and being alone.
I'm in constant constant stress about getting the virus because I breathe harder than most people.
Young people are in stress because they are jobless.
Old people are scared of both dieing and being alone.
Oh man are you going to be disappointed when you get the vaccine and your "suffering" doesn't subside. You should probably talk to someone about it.
If you squint hard enough maybe it's a form of endangerment. There are various types of endangerment, maybe one of them fit here.
"Penalty being that serious"? really?
He was deliberately trying to make people harm themselves. He wanted people getting the vaccine to get sick instead. When you can prove intent with statements like his, it does matter.
Granted, he may escape prison due to incompetence to stand trial.
Granted, he may escape prison due to incompetence to stand trial.
Weird - I wonder what they were thinking?
If they thought that it was worth ruining them, they must have believe that they work.
If they thought that it was worth ruining them, they must have believe that they work.
That's just one possibility, they could also have destroyed them intentionally because of a conspiracy about the vaccine being bad for people. We won't know without more information.
Anti-vaxxers don't think they don't work; they believe (without evidence) that they are more harmful than helpful.
Felony_Fred(2)
Doesn’t really matter what they were thinking. What matters is the plan of how the vaccines are delivered, stored, distributed, and monitored.
Anything that can go wrong will go wrong and the execution of the plan needs to account for that.
Anything that can go wrong will go wrong and the execution of the plan needs to account for that.
By that logic the plan was fine then. 500 doses out of 2.79 million is an insignificant loss.
It’s still interesting to wonder what they were thinking, since it might be informative about how to make the plan better, or about risks that have not yet materialized.
It’s still interesting to wonder what they were thinking, since it might be informative about how to make the plan better, or about risks that have not yet materialized.
Designing solutions based on motivation is a waste of time and not scalable.
Can you give an example of a single solution that isn’t based on motivation?
[deleted]
There are problems and there are solutions.
Making sure the vaccine is monitored and distributed correctly is a problem to be solved.
The motivation as to why a someone wouldn’t want that is a thought experiment.
Making sure the vaccine is monitored and distributed correctly is a problem to be solved.
The motivation as to why a someone wouldn’t want that is a thought experiment.
Making sure the vaccine is monitored and distributed correctly, depends on finding people who are motivated to do so, does it not?
[deleted]
I am wishing he didn't have some politically connected agenda. Those fires need no more fuel.
I don't know why someone would intentionally destroy vaccines.
There are a ton of conspiracy theories around vaccines, and the coronavirus vaccine in particular.
Why would coronavirus vaccines be any more problematic than any other vaccine? If powers that be want to slip special gunk in the coronavirus vaccine, they can just as easily do that for flu shots or any other mandatory vaccine out there.
If a person was able to rationally process evidence they probably wouldn’t believe conspiracy theories to begin with.
Good thing people in authority never use their power for evil.
flu shots aren’t mandatory in the US. Only half of Americans get the flu shot in most normal years.
Flu shots are not mandatory, and not all country have mandatory vaccination schemes, relying on the health system's ability to convince people. Also, antivaxxers usually try to avoid the mandatory ones, are often quite immune to Occam's Razor, and apply critical thinking only to their opponent's arguments :)
Because they think they’re saving people from vaccines. The irony
There better be a follow up article about "license revoked, and charges filed."
seriously people, quit posting paywalled content.
No. I don't only want to read ad-driven content. Time to learn how to bypass paywalls in 2020.
so... you don't want to pay for content or get ads. Enjoy your cake.
You can bypass a paywall by paying.
That’s how I interpreted the post.
That’s how I interpreted the post.
To be fair, doesn't bypassing paywalls kind of the defeat the purpose for these sites to be able to provide content without ads? Thus, ad driven content is the only way for them to keep the lights on.
Frequently bypassing is just searching for the title to pick it up at another news site that it's syndicated to.
The WashPo paywall is the worst -- it rewrites your address bar so you can't even bookmark the URL for later or copy/paste it to share. Really frustrating on mobile when you can be in an app that's not logged into WashPo. Why would the product team make that decision?
Paywall content is explicitly ok on Hacker News. From the FAQ [0]:
> Are paywalls ok?
> It's ok to post stories from sites with paywalls that have workarounds.
> In comments, it's ok to ask how to read an article and to help other users do so. But please don't post complaints about paywalls. Those are off topic. More here. [1]
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10178989
> Are paywalls ok?
> It's ok to post stories from sites with paywalls that have workarounds.
> In comments, it's ok to ask how to read an article and to help other users do so. But please don't post complaints about paywalls. Those are off topic. More here. [1]
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10178989
That’s fine. The discussions here are most of the time more interesting than the articles anyway.
And there are ways around most paywalls if one article is particularly interesting.
And there are ways around most paywalls if one article is particularly interesting.
It would've taken about the same amount of time to find and link a non-paywalled article, and been much more useful.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2020/12/31/wiscon...
Dunno. My "bypass paywalls clean" Browser-add on does wonders.
Can read it fine within hn app(Android - manual maly)
While I agree, there would be very little left otherwise.
Isn’t the MSRP for those vaccine doses something north of $10k each? In addition to being a really dumb thing to do, it also sounds like a potentially ruinous amount of financial damage if the hospital tries to recover the funds.
I couldn’t read due to the paywall but really wonder what would be going through someone’s head to do that... it’s one thing to not want a vaccine (personally I’d rather wait a bit), but another to actively sabotage one of the biggest medical initiatives in our lifetime.
I couldn’t read due to the paywall but really wonder what would be going through someone’s head to do that... it’s one thing to not want a vaccine (personally I’d rather wait a bit), but another to actively sabotage one of the biggest medical initiatives in our lifetime.
I don’t know for sure, but from what I read the cost per dose is under USD 40 since a lot of governments already invested billions into their research. If they asked 10k per vial after all of that money it’d be a huge slap in the face.
Pfizer charges $19.50 per dose ($39 per 2 round vaccination). You might want to be more cautious about the place you heard MSRP is $10,000 per dose, it's clearly not that price at the volume it's being distributed.
[deleted]
> Isn’t the MSRP for those vaccine doses something north of $10k each?
... No. Where on earth did you get that? It depends what your government has negotiated with the drug company, but generally somewhere between 10 and 20 euro a dose, or under 5 euro a dose for Oxford.
EU prices, for instance: https://www.businessinsider.com/cost-pfizer-astrazeneca-mode...
... No. Where on earth did you get that? It depends what your government has negotiated with the drug company, but generally somewhere between 10 and 20 euro a dose, or under 5 euro a dose for Oxford.
EU prices, for instance: https://www.businessinsider.com/cost-pfizer-astrazeneca-mode...
I thought the doses ranged from around $3 - $100 depending on the type. But I also can’t read the article so I don’t know which vaccine it was.
12 euros in the EU for the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine, that's about 15 dollars.
>57 vials of the vaccine, which must be kept at low temperatures to remain viable, had to be tossed Saturday when they were discovered outside the refrigerator.
im a diesel engine mechanic by trade and this sounds entirely within the realm of human error. As someone in a "manager"-ish position though, termination sounds a little on the extreme side considering healthcare is strained to the breaking point currently. people get in a rush sometimes.
I once caught an employee i hired a few years back watering down something called DEF (Diesel Exhaust Fluid) with tap water. DEF is extremely critical in modern trucks as it arrests and reduces gasses and chemicals from diesel exhaust that directly contribute to climate change and global warming. Newer trucks wont even shift into drive without it. When i asked him why he was ruining all our DEF he pointed out that his last employer did this routinely to get customers in and out faster and reduce costs. Instead of firing him I explained how the diesel particulate filter works, and why adding tap water would foul it.
im a diesel engine mechanic by trade and this sounds entirely within the realm of human error. As someone in a "manager"-ish position though, termination sounds a little on the extreme side considering healthcare is strained to the breaking point currently. people get in a rush sometimes.
I once caught an employee i hired a few years back watering down something called DEF (Diesel Exhaust Fluid) with tap water. DEF is extremely critical in modern trucks as it arrests and reduces gasses and chemicals from diesel exhaust that directly contribute to climate change and global warming. Newer trucks wont even shift into drive without it. When i asked him why he was ruining all our DEF he pointed out that his last employer did this routinely to get customers in and out faster and reduce costs. Instead of firing him I explained how the diesel particulate filter works, and why adding tap water would foul it.
You should have kept reading - the employee responsible later acknowledged it was a deliberate act, although the motive remains unknown.
From the USA Today article linked in comments, there's a quote that the individual "acknowledged that they intentionally removed the vaccine from refrigeration."
That's a deliberate act, but the thing that's missing is the purpose they had for removing it.
Did they put it out because they thought it was going to be used for a vaccination drive that day, but it wasn't?
Did they do it to purposefully ruin it? They didn't acknowledge that.
Was it improperly stored in a refrigeration unit that is restricted for only storing other things and the person put it out and posted about it, but nobody claimed it? Maybe it was in a beer fridge or the break room fridge on cleanout day.
Lots of options. In the example the poster said, it was a deliberate act, but in the poster's case, the intent wasn't to ruin things, even if that would have resulted from the deliberare act.
That's a deliberate act, but the thing that's missing is the purpose they had for removing it.
Did they put it out because they thought it was going to be used for a vaccination drive that day, but it wasn't?
Did they do it to purposefully ruin it? They didn't acknowledge that.
Was it improperly stored in a refrigeration unit that is restricted for only storing other things and the person put it out and posted about it, but nobody claimed it? Maybe it was in a beer fridge or the break room fridge on cleanout day.
Lots of options. In the example the poster said, it was a deliberate act, but in the poster's case, the intent wasn't to ruin things, even if that would have resulted from the deliberare act.
That the police were called suggests sabotage as a motive, although that might just be procedural.
> Two days later, the employee acknowledged having “intentionally removed the vaccine from refrigeration,” the hospital, Aurora Medical Center in Grafton, Wis., said in a statement late Wednesday.
from the article
from the article
What kind of punishment could the employee be looking at ?