BThat’s why she deleted her page on Tuesday, the user TikTok hann.brooke95 was not shy to share even the most trivial details of her life with her 19,400 followers.
She posted TikToks about her cooking while breastfeeding, the box of beans she used for nachos, and even the meticulous process of transferring her license as a pharmacy technician from Florida to Illinois, from completing the application to applying an address label. return and stamp on the envelope, leave it in the mailbox in front of her house.
And the flow of daily minutes could have continued if she hadn’t used TikTok to brag about stealing COVID-19 vaccination cards from her job so that she and her husband could get vaccinated.
“I work at a pharmacy and I took the empty ones for myself and my husband,” she wrote in another user’s TikTok comments about fake vaccination cards.
It didn’t take long for other users Becca Walker and Savannah Sparks to increase the label of that return address and match the name and address with the public records for Hannah Brooke Hutchinson, 25, registered as a pharmacy technician in Illinois. Sparks then reported it to the same Illinois pharmaceutical council that had just licensed it. The Illinois Pharmacy Council told The Daily Beast that it does not comment on the investigations.
I’m pretty sure you shouldn’t steal from your job. And I’m pretty sure you shouldn’t steal blank COVID-19 vaccination papers to falsify information and claim that you and your husband were vaccinated when in reality you weren’t, “Walker told TikTok on who posted it to call her out.
Hutchinson did not answer several phone calls and text messages sent to the numbers associated with her and her boyfriend. But after Walker and Sparks posted TikToks about her, Hutchinson deleted her TikTok and deleted her Instagram and Facebook accounts. However, the Daily Beast was able to review the enlarged image and independently confirm Hutchinson’s details, including his license as a pharmacy technician, through public records.
Even before deleting her TikTok, she posted, “Stop hating me! I don’t care what any of you think. I did what was best for me and my husband. ” A few hours later, she posted another TikTok claiming to be a 16-year-old girl from the UK, doing an experiment for her father, who is a filmmaker. But the TikToks, which returned a year ago, followed her husband’s Facebook page, which was also deleted, where she appeared to be a 20-year-old mother.
“Very sick people go to pharmacies, so when you have a pharmacy employee who lies about vaccination, everyone there is at risk,” Sparks, a pharmacist in Biloxi, Mississippi, told The Daily Beast. “I don’t want them in the profession.”
But Hutchinson is far from the only health care professional who seems to be trying to break into the vaccinated world, a trend that could have huge implications for the vulnerable Americans these employees serve.
Since Monday, Walker and Sparks, together, have posted more than half a dozen TikTok videos calling health care workers who talked online about counterfeiting or trying to counterfeit vaccine cards. And I say that other users sent them dozens of tips that they couldn’t check.
“I sit here struggling, thinking of everyone’s implications.”
– Dr. William Schaffner
“It’s overwhelming,” Sparks said. And, warn public health experts, it’s incredibly dangerous.
“I’m sitting here, confused, thinking about everyone’s implications,” said Dr. William Schaffner, a professor of preventive medicine and infectious diseases at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville. “Everyone who works in the health care environment obviously contributes to the safety of the environment, which is their own safety, the safety of their colleagues, and the patients they serve.”
He said those caught doing so would probably lose their jobs, if not their careers.
“We are trying to turn the entire healthcare environment into an area without VOCID and by deliberately undermining this, this is beyond unprofessional. It is deeply unethical and contrary to any oath that a medical worker took when he accepted his diploma. I would imagine that there will be implications at the licensing level. ”
But fears of professional retaliation have not stopped some health workers from turning the taboo subject of vaccine hesitation into influenza.
Under Hutchinson’s initial comment on pinching blank books, Texas nurse Courtney Long wrote, “I can pay you to send me a couple,” followed by a crying, laughing emoji. Sparks managed to identify Long through the Instagram profile Long included on TikTok, where he talked about being a nurse and a Facebook profile, under the name Courtney Renee Long, where he also talked about being a nurse. The Texas Board of Nursing website identifies a Courtney Renee Long as a licensed nurse.
“Is that you, Miss LPN?” Sparks said in a TikTok that he did shouting Long. “Ah, yes, the Texas Health Care Council will see all this.”
Sparks said Long reported to the Texas Board of Health. When contacted by The Daily Beast, the council said it did not comment on the investigations. Daily Beast made a series of attempts to reach Long, through a number associated with the phone numbers of family members and Pinterest, the only social media account in her name that has existed since Saturday. Calls to a number associated with her name and address have not been returned.
Sparks and Walker say they called and reported an oncology nurse in Alabama, a trauma nurse at a children’s hospital in Philadelphia and a receptionist at an asthma clinic.
While it may seem surprising that vaccine resistance exists among medical professionals, even those with a strong scientific background, Schaffer said he simply points out how many Americans are still resistant to vaccination at more than three months. after the first blows entered the arms of the front workers in the field of health. In February, a survey of experts at Northwestern, Northeastern, Rutgers and Harvard universities found that 21% of health workers surveyed did not want to be vaccinated. The hesitation, which indicates skepticism about the vaccine, but not a direct desire to be vaccinated, was 37%.
“There are a large number who are not only indifferent, but contemptuous of the vaccine, but only will not receive it. And this is the remnants of a political approach of the covid in the last administration “, said Schaffner. “It’s hard to ring the bell.”
Of course, health workers are not alone among anti-vaxxers trying to pass as vaccinated, and on Thursday the Inspector General’s Office warned those who were vaccinated not to post pictures with their vaccine cards online due to an increase in cards. false.
As more Americans get vaccinated, anti-vaxxers have turned to social media to support fears of a future ruled by Biden, in which those without vaccination cards will be removed from restaurants, hospitals and even Target.
“If I give a card to check if you are vaccinated, apparently there is a reason for that. You may not be able to go shopping, travel, and buy underwear, ”posted TikTok user truevalor469 from a recliner earlier this month. “Hmm. Sounds like the beginning. ”
The reaction against Walker and Sparks’ crusade to uncover anti-vaxxer health workers on TikTok was harsh. On Wednesday, Sparks changed her phone number after another TikTok user found her and started harassing her. The threats were so serious that on Friday he had to issue a statement on his business website and close the reviews section.
So far there are no government requirements to have a vaccination card, and Schaffner said he has not heard of any private companies requesting them for either their employees or customers. Yesterday, Rutgers University in New Jersey became the first college to require vaccination of students, but Schaffner said fears, however widespread, are still exaggerated.
“By distorting themselves, they avoid a lot of controversy,” he said. “So they do this reprehensibly to avoid discomfort and have to explain themselves and be responsible for their actions.”
Walker said he suspects some users may not be as serious about falsifying vaccines as they are about the influence of the taboo subject.
“If you put a TikTok saying, ‘Oh, I don’t want to get vaccinated. Sell me a vaccine card, “this is an automatic 100,000 view,” Walker told The Daily Beast.
A TikTok user named linds3r commented on a viral TikTok about forging vaccination cards, writing, “I have a template if you want it,” and later, “lol I’ve (8) done it so far front and back.” The user, Lindsey Stauffer, says on Facebook that she is employed in medical billing at the Department of Veterans Affairs in Lebanon, Pennsylvania. He also makes and sells anti-Biden and pro-Trump T-shirts on his Facebook page, which includes several of the same TikTok images.
Arriving at The Daily Beast, Stauffer admitted to writing the posts, but denied making eight books.
“I did not write about their achievement. I said I know where you can get one. You can go to Google right now and extract your own images about it, “Stauffer told The Daily Beast. “Do nothing. Anyone can access it. ”
Stauffer also denied living in Lebanon, although the phone number used to be on her mailing lists. She refused to work at VA, despite her listing as an employer on Facebook. (The Federal Bureau of Veterans Affairs did not immediately respond to requests for comment.) Stauffer also said she had already been vaccinated.
“So why would I need to do them?” she told The Daily Beast.
But even when medical professionals joke about counterfeiting vaccination, Schaffner said, it can create problems.
“When people hear that health workers are doing this, it undermines the public’s belief in these institutions and their ability to keep them safe,” Schaffner said.