Originally published at: Teacher arrested after giving Covid shot to a 17-year-old student | Boing Boing
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This is scary that she could even obtain the vaccine. Let alone administer it to a minor.
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I will quibble with the fact that J&J is not a mRNA vaccine, but WTF was this person doing?? Unethical, immoral and hazardous is no way to go through life!
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I think all of the headlines listing her profession as a teacher are misleading. She did this in her home, in the context of the friend of her child. Still horrible and wrong, but I don’t see her being a teacher as relevant. It feels like part of the broader anti-teacher rhetoric around Covid policy and safety, and I’m more than a little startled to see it here on BoingBoing which is generally supportive of education.
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this is especially true with the coronavirus vaccines because the messenger RNA technology requires specialized training
But the JNJ vaccine is not a mRNA-based vaccine…
edit: I see docosc beat me to it
Also, where did this person get the materials? Syringes are probably not difficult to get (not sure if these vaccines need a special type…), but how does a non-medical professional acquire the stuff?
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And they filmed it!
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So I guess my safari style idea where we ride around in open-topped land rovers with dart guns is out of the question?
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No, just on the back burner.
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Any graduate of IVF treatments (at least during the decade when this part of the experience was foisted onto me) has all the necessary practical skills to administer both sub-cutaneous and IM injections. We had quite a large bag of syringes left over (new in packages). Vaccinating 17 year olds who want to be vaccinated sounds like a great use for these.
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Maybe in that as a teacher, a professional who spends their time around children and teenagers, she should know better than to do something like this?
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Blimey! This ones’a biter! We’re going to need the thunder blanket to calm them down.
It’s relevant because teachers are supposed to know better.
All the training teachers go through, and is updated and refreshed throughout the year? It’s not all about the best pedagogical techniques and new tricks for teaching phonics and trig. Quite a lot of it is about all the things it’s possible to go wrong when you’re in close contact with children who you are responsible for, and to make sure they don’t happen. Teachers have to have signed permission from parents before they’re allowed to give aspirin, or to keep a child’s asthma huffer safe. As far as injections, I’m pretty sure an epipen is as far as that’s allowed to go.
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Please don’t suggest this would have been ok if she was familiar with intramuscular injections from another context. There’s a myriad of reasons not to do this even if she was an expert in the technique.
Besides, just watching the video clip I noticed a few things she did differently from the training that the CDC is putting out. She didn’t feel around for anatomical landmarks to identify the center of the deltoid and it’s not clear if she even cleaned the injection site first. She wasn’t wearing gloves either.
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If the kid was a runaway, or homeless, he might have been in the clear IF the friend’s mother had actually taken him to a clinic…
Overall, we find that most states require parental consent at this point, though the landscape may be shifting slightly as more jurisdictions seek to encourage vaccination of young people. Specific findings are as follows:
Most states (41) require parental consent for vaccination of minors below the age of 18, although one of these states (NE) requires consent below age 19. There are some exceptions to these requirements:
Many allow for certain minors, such as those who are emancipated, homeless or living apart from their parent or guardian, or married, to self-consent.
Cities in two states (San Francisco in CA and Philadelphia in PA), have moved to allow minors, ages 12 and older, to self-consent for COVID-19 vaccination.
In one state (AZ), if a parent refuses to consent for COVID-19 vaccination, but if a child or a doctor requests it, a court order can be obtained to allow for vaccination.
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Seems to me that there’s a lot of missing information in the story. It doesn’t quite add up that the kid was visiting his friend and just happened to get a covid shot. So what if she’s a teacher, would it be different if she was an office manager or a police detective. Why not just say a person not authorized or qualified gave the 17 year old the shot. To me the bigger question is where did she get it and why did she give the kid the shot in the first place. Did the kid want the shot and his parents wouldn’t give him permission? Why did he go tell mom, Most 17 year olds are big enough to say hell no you’re not giving me a shot. Weirdness abounds.
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Well no… it would be different if she were a health care professional, like a school nurse, trained to given the vaccine and the kid had specifically asked because their parents had denied them.
It’s the fact that she was not qualified to give the shot, and did it at her home, etc, that’s a problem. It can put the school in legal trouble (although, so would the school nursing giving a shot to an under 18 without parental permission).
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In other news, Peter Norton was arrested for inoculating millions of PCs against viruses, without having any medical training.
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Depending on the location, a 17 yo can get vaccinations on their own consent. From a medical professional. In a clinic. It’s at least possible that the age of the kid was immaterial. The not trained to give immunizations (aka practicing medicine without a license) is rather a bigger deal no matter the jurisdiction.
tl:dr She done fucked up.
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Adverse reactions to a vaccination are rare, but you damn well better have trained medical professionals onsite in case it happens.
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