It sort of cares, the various gradations between different kinds of murders involve premeditation, and desire to kill rather than harm. So in the US she might “only” be guilty of reckless indifference to human life (and fraud), or maybe manslaughter, but not likely of premeditated homicide. Assuming her lawyer could convincingly argue that she had no intent to kill, only an intent to substitute her judgment for the judgment of her patients, the doctors, and health authorities in a case that ultimately resulted in one or more deaths.
However that could also interact in interesting ways to murder felony statutes, which basically say of a felony is committed and someone dies there was a murder (i.e. bank robbery with toy guns, but a guard has a heart attack is a murder not unarmed robbery). So maybe this is fraud or reckless indifference to human life, but via murder felony statutes gets “upgraded” to real murder.
German law may differ, intent to kill may not matter. Number of deaths in a first offense may not matter.
A fair treatment would be to be sentenced to lethal injection but at least the first 8000 times it is just saline. Double blind so neither she nor the folks administering it know for sure.
According to the font of all knowledge, Wikipedia, he was certified by the ABO in 1995 but had some complaints about how they recertified people. Apparently the ABO had offered lifetime certifications at one point, but started requiring renewals every ten years–while simultaneously grandfathering in people who’d gotten the lifetime certifications earlier. Paul of course founded his own board, used it to re-certify himself at a much lower cost and eventually let his ABO certification lapse.
Rand Paul is in my opinion the clear front runner for America’s Douchiest Senator. He makes a good case for being America’s Worst Senator, too, but Mitch McConnell has that locked down at the moment. With Ted Cruz around, the competition is also pretty stiff.
Yeah. ok. But it is reporting what happened, and what happened was that a Red Cross nurse did this thing. It’s a journalistic convention. If it was to say former Red Cross nurse, you might think ‘why was a former Red Cross nurse administering vaccines?’.
The story has a bit more background than the Yahoo story gives. It originally came up in April at which time a colleague noticed the nurse filling a syringe with saline solution and asked her what was going on. The nurse apparently told her colleague that she had injected six people with a saline solution because she had accidentally dropped and broken a vaccine vial.
The nurse was sacked and an investigation started into whether she’d injected others with saline rather than the vaccine. They initially found 22 people without antibodies but evidently now think things might be much worse…
ETA: There seems to be some lack of clarity about exactly how this came to be discovered. Some of the german language reporting says a colleague noticed what she was doing and challenged her; others say that she told a colleague about it herself afterwards.
There is also a lot of speculation about motives, extent, etc. For what it is worth, her lawyer states that it was just the initial six doses and that she didn’t just inject saline solution but rather tried to make up for the missing doses by a mixture of saline solution and remnants from injected vials.
So either anti-vaxxer deliberately injecting ineffective solution or scared employee trying to cover up a cockup on her part without as such intending to harm/not vaccinate recipients.
Then there are also allegations that she may have forged her own vaccination passport and not received a vaccine herself.
But then again there are discrepancies in the reporting over whether she is speaking to the police during interrogation or not. The Süddeutsche Zeitung has a story claiming that she is not speaking in police interviews which seems to be based on some press statement by a politician, the NDR has a story in which a prosecution spokesman accepts that she did put forward the claim about mixing together remnants of vaccine in early police interviews.
So in short, we have a lot of conflicting and not terribly clear info at the moment.
Adding to the others who have answered you:
I know of two nurses - one is a family member, one is a friend of a friend - who are to put it lightly, batshit crazy. Strangely enough, both are die hard Trump supporters, so…
Sigh. I am a veterinarian, and have a fair number of clients who are in human health care. The MDs can be hit or miss- usually great, sometimes arrogant pricks. Nurses are often some of our most challenging clients because some think they know more than they do, and come to me with batshit pseudoscience ideas. This is of course frankly terrifying, as their fringe beliefs are not limited to the topic of their pet’s health. Not to say all nurses are like this, but most veterinarians will acknowledge that nurses are often some of the worst clients we have.
there are as well many different educational levels associated with the title “nurse” . Some have short 8 week courses that we in Canada refer to as “practical” nurse. Some are RN’s which currently is a four year bachelor’s program. That’s not to say an RN might not harbour what many would consider unscientific ideas. This behaviour is not limited to nurses, either, as many have pointed out. My first memorable encounter with this sort of thing was when I was in school; a physics instructor (not a professor, but he was young postgrad) had a lot of “pyramid energy” beliefs and was not shy about sharing them. I first thought it was a ham handed way of stimulating discussion, but it soon became clear it was not.
If I remember, at one point Rand Paul (and/or his dad?) called for the elimination of the CDC. If they don’t understand the importance of the CDC, neither should have practiced medicine or been in government.
Makes me sad. My vet not too long before she retired a couple years ago was going on about the ridiculous people who were anti-MMR vax. She said “I’d like to have them come and talk to my husband who was in a polio ward when he was a kid”.
I have been lucky enough in my life to have spent very little time in hospitals. But when I have been in one for whatever reason, I’m always in awe of what nurses do. In particular - when my ex-wife had heart surgery at Stanford back in the 90’s and more recently when I went to visit a friend of mine at Sharp Memorial who was there for a heart transplant (at a very young age).
We also have other friends that are nurses. They are not batshit crazy like the ones I mentioned above.
As somebody who teaches the immune system and how vaccines work to future nurses:
Most people who finish my course are pro-vax or at least sufficiently shamed not to speak publicly about being anti-vax, at least temporarily. It took some years before I heard about a former student with anti-vax sentiments.
You only need a C to progress in some cases, so it’s plausible to squeak by without ever truly understanding the immune system.
-Typically the topics related to immunology and vaccination would come up multiple times in nursing education. I’ve had another instructor seek me out for an immunology refresher because she was teaching a unit on different kinds of vaccines and needed clarity on why we might need boosters for certain vaccines.
Oh, I have no complaint about the accuracy of the article. My complaint is with the reality that they’re surely reporting accurately. In a just world, that person would already be a former nurse.
