Assuming that it’s proven to be a malicious act, if one of the people who was inoculated with a compromised dose gets COVID next week and dies, is a murder charge plausible? How strong does the causal link need to be? Suppose the research data show that someone given a good first dose would have been 60% protected a week later, at the time they caught it. It seems to me that the “reasonable doubt” standard must only apply only to the facts of the case, not to the statistical probability of causation, otherwise 60% would mean that you couldn’t convict on any criminal charge of causing harm?
Not very I would think, for the very reason you state. One dose isn’t completely protective, nor is even a full set. I suspect it would be almost impossible to prove that proper vaccination would have definitively saved them.
Something a little lesser like criminal negligence and/or voluntary manslaughter on the other hand…
But I suspect this dolt will just end up being an anti-vaxxer fruitcake, who wasn’t acting maliciously. Just idiotically. So more likely involuntary manslaughter.
There must be a lot of crazies breeding with their poodles to produce all those wackadoodles. I hope, at least, they can be housebroken.
Naah, just leave 'em outside in the backyard. Some critters are indoor critters; some are not.
At a teachers’ meeting this last week it was announced that we really need to be wearing masks and one of the teachers went off on a rant about it being fake news and a plot to take away our freedom, etc.
He’s kind of nuts so I wasn’t surprised but what did surprise me was that afterwards another of the teachers indicated to me that he agreed!
Far too much craziness in this world!
I’d ask them how free are the third of a million Americans who have already died of COVID-19.
Do you think that anything said to a CT true believer would make a difference?
They’d say that people died but the COVID-19 diagnosis was made up, or they just happened to have it while dying of something unrelated.
I’m currently dealing with a co-worker whose entire family (7 people including her parents in their 60s) has contracted Covid. She insists they just have a bad flu, because Covid doesn’t exist. She’s freaking out because her parents and sister are very sick and the doctors aren’t treating them appropriately because they (the doctors and hospitals) are part of the hoax or have been deluded by the hoaxers.
The extended family were all together for several meals the week of Christmas, but the ones outside the immediate household aren’t getting tested or isolating. Two of the extended family are nurses! (Not RNs, some lower qualification)
To the guy who made the rant? No, they sound mentally unstable. But the other teacher? Maybe you could challenge his belief. I’d probably mention actual people you know who died, though, rather than just a large number that would seem impersonal. I’d also mention the doctors and nurses you know. Just keep it calm. Maybe even try the “I was a bit skeptical too, but then …” gambit
Then again, what you describe sounds utterly bizarre to me. I don’t get why the ranting teacher hasn’t been fired. For one, those who believe dangerous, deadly conspiracy theories and can’t keep their mouth shut about them shouldn’t be allowed to teach students. But, even if you ignore that, he just mouthed off to his superiors after being told the requirements for his job.
I mean, I have an anger problem myself, and have told off some people who refused to wear masks. But I can’t imagine being so off my rocker that I’d start a rant at my workplace. Even if the insubordination isn’t enough, he sounds full on nuts, to the point I wouldn’t trust him not to go off on a student.
With the other teacher, as long as they will wear the mask even under protest and don’t spread that nonsense to the students, they seem okay. But the other one I wouldn’t want teaching even if he does reluctantly comply. He’s a ticking timebomb.
Teachers unions. As someone who is himself in a public employee union, I can tell you that it can be very difficult to get fired when you are part of such an organization.
Print out and show him the OP in this thread. It is a Q&A between someone who believes the virus is a biological weapon to destroy freedom, and one of my cousins who is an RN with a PhD. I don’t expect she convinced her friend, and I doubt she will convince your colleague. But there it is.
I’m not a lawyer but I would speculate you could probably get a charge of felony murder here. That’s the charge when somebody commits a felony and somebody else dies during the course of the felony. If that was the charge, I believe all the prosecution would have to do is prove that the accused knowingly vandalized the vaccines (thereby committing a felony), that the vandalism caused the vaccines to not be effective, and that the victim died of a disease which would have been prevented by an effective vaccine. The felony murder charge allows you to make the charge without having to show there was an intent to cause a death.
Here is Wisconsin’s felony murder statute. It only applies to the listed felonies (battery, robbery, sexual assault, etc.), none of which seem to fit the actions of this pharmacist. Then you have the issue of causation, which would be problematic (although the defendant’s statement that he wanted the victims to think they were vaccinated even though they weren’t) might be a good indicator that the defendant’s actions would be a “substantial factor”.
I highly doubt an appellate court would accept a felony murder charge in this case.
I am assuming that leaving them out just makes them ineffective, and does not actually make them dangerous, or that would have been brought up, but I have not seen it definitively stated.
If it does make them dangerous, then that’s a whole different level.
No they’re harmless in themselves (the way that a malfunctioning parachute won’t harm you but hitting the ground might).
Jeff Bahr is the president of the Aurora Health Care Medical Group:
There’s a difference between “no evidence that they pose harm” and “evidence that they don’t pose harm”. They probably don’t, but the question hasn’t been studied.
We shouldn’t need to belabor the obvious problems with proving a negative, I would hope…
ETA: We even know you can’t guarantee that the vaccine doesn’t cause harm even when properly handled, of course, which is why they have all the associated warnings about allergies, etc. So what’s the point? The best you can hope for is that there is no reason to believe it’s going to make it more dangerous, I don’t expect you’ll ever have a better assurance than that.
The question has actually been studied, for vaccines in general, although not for this particular vaccine (there just hasn’t been enough time).
Vaccines don’t “go bad.” They lose potency, but there’s nothing in them that can actually harm you. As long as they remained sealed, there’s 0 danger from an expired vaccine.
For that matter, partially due to time constraints, diminished potency hasn’t been well-studied for this vaccine, either. It’s actually possible that even the “ruined” vaccines might still have had some effect. It’s in fact highly probable that they did, just not the 95% effectiveness that properly stored and administered vaccines would have.
And, by the way, I don’t think any sort of “felony” murder charge could possibly stick. Even if someone vaccinated with the “ruined” batch dies from COVID, there’s simply no way to prove they wouldn’t have died if they had gotten a fully potent vaccine - even at its best, it wasn’t effective for 5% of the test population - and there’s no way to prove that the “ruined” vaccine didn’t still give them at least some protection.
I think that’s a stretch with the Pfizer mRNA vaccine. The delivery method is so delicate.