Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Vaccine Had to Be Used. He Used It. He Was Fired

nyti.ms

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

311–320 of 369 posts

Re: The Vaccine Had to Be Used. He Used It. He Was Fired

#311

Post by NMDaniel »

JoshTko wrote: post #306
HelloMcFly wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we can confidently confirm that 1) there are leftover vaccines, 2) good-faith efforts were made to administer them to the target audience, and 3) there were leftover vaccines that were definitely otherwise going to go to waste then I'm 100% fine with people administering to their contact list. I'd rather that 1000x over than unused vaccines be tossed into the garbage. We all lose with unused vaccines.

It's just poor design to allow for good-faith. It's too easy for a bad actor to artificially create "leftover" doses to give to friends and family. Just don't allow doctor discretion and organize better for the next day, problem solved.

> It's too easy for a bad actor to artificially create "leftover" doses to give to friends and family

How? If X people made appointments in a day, then exactly X vaccines should be distributed for that day. Leftover vaccines will only be distributed after all those appointments are over, so it is impossible for any of the X people(assuming they arrived on time) to lose their vaccine.

Re: The Vaccine Had to Be Used. He Used It. He Was Fired

#312

Post by colechristensen »

UncleMeat wrote: post #181
colechristensen wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I likewise know someone who intentionally makes as little money as possible in order to take advantage of state support program. Or to be more accurate, makes as much money as possible under the various limits for benefits while living in a comfortable (essentially inherited) situation. This is a person with high education, without any major disability or impediment to working, they just choose not to work because th…

Of course. These people exist. Wealthy people also seek to construct their retirement portfolio in order to minimize (or even eliminate) taxes. This is especially common and valuable now with ACA subsidies. But so what? The goal of a program should be effectively improving the functioning of society. That can still be a real outcome even if there are people who choose to be less productive so they can obtain benefits…

Well there's a motivation from some people to claim that people taking advantage of social programs don't exist, and the opposite as well to claim that social programs are overrun with fraud.

So what? Neither is right, generally. The political discussion about social programs needs to be about how to maximize their effectiveness, not to be about this existential struggle between two sides who both deny reality.

Re: The Vaccine Had to Be Used. He Used It. He Was Fired

#313

Post by mofosyne »

nickff wrote: post #302
Mediterraneo10 wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why don't they have goals and aspirations? Who says they don't? People living on state benefits may yet have things they are passionate about. Their time is spent doing something , and sometimes that is something good for society, even though it isn't immediately profit-generating. Living in Finland I met a man who was perpetually on the dole, but he was an extremely active Wikipedia editor, for example. I have oft…

Your comment actually illustrates one thing I find repulsive about basic income proposals; many people seem to want basic income to finance a life of vanity, where they help no one more than themselves.

Still more ethical than a vegan having to compromise their morals by taking a butchering job because they can't find any other jobs and need to feed their kids and have a roof over their head.

Re: The Vaccine Had to Be Used. He Used It. He Was Fired

#314

Post by leetcrew »

Aerroon wrote: post #305
lostcolony wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah. It's super easy to fix, if people wanted to fix it. Even with welfare, you just make it so every after tax dollar earned reduces the welfare check by 50 cents. Tada, incentive to work, and only when you're making double what welfare pays out do you stop receiving assistance. People may still 'take advantage' of it, by choosing not to work (if we got rid of all the systems requiring proof they're trying to find…

How is it a super easy fix? It seems extremely unaffordable. Forget incentive to work. The US had a tax revenue of $3.5 trillion with a population of a 330 million. You shut down the entire government and spend it on UBI. That's $883 per person per month. But it's worse than that. Wealth doesn't appear out of thin air. Money might, but money only matters insofar as what you can spend it on. If only 300 million apples…

you're arguing a tangent to GP's point, which could be rephrased as "assuming we're already willing to spend $x on welfare, we can structure the payments in a way that effective income increases monotonically as the recipients earn higher wages for work". you can fix welfare cliffs without spending any more/less money.

Re: The Vaccine Had to Be Used. He Used It. He Was Fired

#315

Post by timwaagh »

robin21 wrote: post #275
rjbwork wrote: post #5

This is just Kafkaesque. People in a position of authority with blind adherence to rules intended for optimal scenarios. They're literally saying he should have just thrown them away instead of distributing them as best he was able. This whole thing is a logistical clusterfuck and they're trying to throw this dude under the bus. It's obscene.

It seems like the guy was unlucky. But corruption is a really bad thing and I lean on the side of anti-corruption any day of the week. It’s very convenient that there was only one dose left for his sick wife. The wife was right to question whether it was right, but more importantly was that they should have considered the perception of the situation. If something will have the look of corruption, but will result in w…

Corruption is everywhere and unavoidable. Not that you shouldn't try to fight it but you should not be overzealous. For example this guy, he immigrated to the us. Impossible without money right? Except Pakistan has none so likely a family member helped him at some point. Corruption. He should have been denied a visum if we are being strict. Corruption can be prosecuted in specific cases when there is ample proof. In this case all there is is idle speculation. I don't know what a world without corruption would look like. As an extreme example I would not be able to buy flowers for my girlfriend anymore because doing so is a personal favour.

Re: The Vaccine Had to Be Used. He Used It. He Was Fired

#316

Post by valarauko »

Grustaf wrote: post #300
valarauko wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's how the appointments are given out, but not everybody shows up. For my second shot, I drove out 30 miles in a snowstorm, and waited two hours in line. Other people probably waited longer. Should the last couple of people be turned away after waiting 2 hours because there aren't neat multiples of 10 at closing time? Your solution, while reasonable, optimizes vaccinate utilization but at incredible cost to an un…

For me the main point is really to avoid moral hazard, not saving those 9 doses. It would be worth wasting a few doses here and there if it greatly decreases the level of corruption in the system. But if people waiting for 2 hours is common, then turning away the last ones doesn’t seem like a good solution. If they really wanted to they could of course come up with an efficient, low corruption system but they don’t s…

> It would be worth wasting a few doses here and there if it greatly decreases the level of corruption in the system.

While reasonable in isolation, I would suggest that this view doesn't account for the extreme scarcity of the vaccine, and the stretched healthcare resources. I mean, while I work 300 feet from our hospital and our vaccine stockpiles, it was quicker to travel to the neighboring county with a lower caseload. As someone who still experienced close to 4 hours standing in line in total & driving over a 100 miles, the situation is pretty dire. Ironically, NY state has been extremely boneheaded in vaccine delivery policy. They didn't allow hospital networks any leniency is how vaccines are administered, but punished them for slow rollout. In the initial two weeks or so, NY state mandated that only COVID ward staff, emergency & delivery staff should be vaccinated. We were done with them in a couple of days, but the state wouldn't allow the rest of medical staff to be vaccinated. It was a ridiculous situation - we had thousands of medical staff waiting & ready to get vaccinated, we had the resources, and we had the vaccine - but the state would not update their policy. By the time they did in mid January, we were already facing the post Christmas & New Year related travel surge in cases and didn't have staff to spare for vaccination. According to me, hospitals/counties should have been allowed to move further down the priority list as and when they had the capacity to do so, rather than requiring the governor to allow it. Instead, we had ridiculous situations like 30% utilization of stocks.

> If they really wanted to they could of course come up with an efficient, low corruption system but they don’t seem terribly organized in the first place.

Agreed, but what's the options available to the last mile staff, like the nurse who opened the vial, or the doctor in question?

Re: The Vaccine Had to Be Used. He Used It. He Was Fired

#317

Post by fl0wenol »

colechristensen wrote: post #120
ascagnel_ wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of this comes from the Reagan-era idea of "welfare queens" -- that because the idea of "government handouts" are so enticing, people will cheat the system to get them. There are two issues with this: - "government handouts" and a reliance on welfare are typically a symptom, not a root cause, of an ailing society -- there are bigger issues at play around wealth and ownership if a large segment of the population…

I likewise know someone who intentionally makes as little money as possible in order to take advantage of state support program. Or to be more accurate, makes as much money as possible under the various limits for benefits while living in a comfortable (essentially inherited) situation. This is a person with high education, without any major disability or impediment to working, they just choose not to work because th…

I'm not sure if you're framing it this way, but how is this a problem?

The concept might be foreign to most HNers, but lots of people lack entrepreneurial spirit, they instead attempt to minimize pain in their lives.

As long as it's sustainable, why worry? Do we want to drag people into productivity or just let them live their own lives?

I think it's inefficient to do the former.

Re: The Vaccine Had to Be Used. He Used It. He Was Fired

#318

Post by acheron »

kiba wrote: post #78
asmos7 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Our education in the US is in the same position. We spend far more time, energy and money on problematic students who don't give a rip than we do on dedicated/motivated students. The goal posts aren't there. If a certain number of students fail it creates red flags for the district and if those students are a certain minority that can viewed as evidence of institutional racism and open up legal liabilities as such th…

Chance are, the dedicated/motivated students likely have a far more supportive environment than the kids on the bottom. Increasing resources and support to the top kids will surely increase inequality, while also improving the top's capabilities. Meanwhile, the kids at the bottom get left behind.

“Are tests biased against students who don’t give a shit?”

https://www.theonion.com/in-the-know-are-tests-biased-agains...

Re: The Vaccine Had to Be Used. He Used It. He Was Fired

#319

Post by alphameese »

karpierz wrote: post #308
skrowl wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

210,000,000 working age adults in the USA * 40,000/year UBI welfare handouts * a decade = 84 TRILLION dollars. The US govt is currently spending about 2 trillion / year more than they take from their citizens in taxes. Out of curiosity, what makes you think "We can afford it as a country"?

Out of curiosity, why did you cite a "deficit per year" figure for context, but provide a "cost per decade" figure for UBI?

Also who’s proposing a 40000 / year UBI? Most figures I’ve seen are for 2000 / month, aka 24000 / year.

Re: The Vaccine Had to Be Used. He Used It. He Was Fired

#320

Post by CivBase »

robin21 wrote: post #277
ls612 wrote: post #48

This just goes to show how people are. They don’t want others to benefit if they don’t also benefit. They would rather more people get sick and die than someone get a shot before their turn. So much about politics can he explained by looking at people this way.

That is short-term thinking. What happens if this is left to slide. Someone hears about it and then you have more open vials that needed to be used late at night - “my family was the only ones awake so I gave it to them”. Bribes could be paid too. It only seems like one dose here but that’s how corruption always begins and then one day you become Russia. It underlines a large ideological difference in politics that e…

> What happens if this is left to slide.

Then we'd have fewer vaccines expire before they can be used.

This wasn't a problem because a doctor vaccinated people out of order. This was a problem because the hospital failed to find recipients for the vaccines they had. If you're going to make an example of someone, make an example of the hospital.

Post reply on HN