Recent news story: A CEO of a casino in BC and his wife are alleged to have flown north to Whitehorse, Yukon, then immediately taken a local plane to the First Nation community of Beaver Creek, on the Alaska border, and got COVID vaccines by posing as essential workers.
Never mind that the reason the inhabitants of Beaver Creek are a priority for vaccination is because of the isolation and limited health facilities that far north, so an outbreak could be deadly to the community. Casino CEOs are entitled to their vaccine, dammit!
Uh, no. They’ve been charged with breaching Yukon’s mandatory quarantine rules and face a court date in May, on charges under the territorial Civil Emergency Measures Act. If convicted, could be fined and possible jailed.
He is now the former CEO of the casino.
And the government of BC has advised that even though the two of them got the first shot of the vaccine, they will not get the second shot until August, which is when they were originally eligible for a vaccine - queue-jumping doesn’t count. (It may speed up, of course, if more doses come available in coming months, but they’ll still be on the regular schedule, it sounds like.)
One hopes they didn’t bring COVID to Beaver Creek. But if anybody there does turn up ill in the next few days it’d be appropriate to charge these folks with something between reckless endangerment and manslaughter.
Why? Do you feel it’s not possible because no individual person could show they personally were the ones who were denied vaccine by the Bakers’ actions? Or do you feel nobody could show harm that was caused by being denied vaccine?
I doubt it. I don’t think I could sue the Bakers because I wouldn’t be able to offer evidence that the vaccines they took under false pretenses might have otherwise been given to me. Because I’m not a member of the First Nation community of Beaver Creek.
But if I was a member of the First Nation community of Beaver Creek? Then yes, I think I could make a plausible argument that the vaccines they took might have been given to me.
People die due to contracting Covid. Other people experience serious health problems due to contracting Covid. Vaccines reduce your chance of contracting Covid. So preventing a person from receiving vaccine increase their chance of contracting Covid and thereby dying or experiencing serious health problems.
Avoiding contracting Covid requires people to practice burdensome behavior such as staying home and thereby not working. It also causes psychological stress by forcing people to exist in social isolation. Denying somebody immunity via vaccination forces that person to follow these burdensome behaviors to a greater extent.
Endangering somebody’s life or health, hurting their employment opportunities, causing emotional distress; these are all damages that people have been awarded compensation for in lawsuits.
It all sounds rather improbable. Doubly so because it’s in Canada which is less friendly to stupid lawsuits. For instance, it’s my understanding suing for “emotional distress” isn’t really a thing.
Per wiki the population of Beaver Creek is about 100 people.
Sounds like the authorities probably had a vaccination clinic for a few hours one day and the traveling health team from down-country brought a box of vaccine vials along. If by bad luck these two clowns showing up meant the health team was one or two shots short there’d be a somebody doing without. But ISTM it’s pretty unlikely that the traveling health team would plan their supply of vaccine that close to the bone.
This is a global crisis, but it’s not quite like the health/vaccine emergency that’s commemorated by the Iditarod:
It was a stupid thing to do. It was a stupid way to do it. And some scientists believe that for every case of Covid there could be three undiagnosed ones - meaning the vaccine might be less helpful than they thought. (You should still get vaccinated.)
No doubt you will now insist that you meant emotion distress “isn’t really a thing” in the Yukon Territory. And if I provide a cite for that, you’ll want one from the First Nation community of Beaver Creek.
