The Republican National Committee’s Washington headquarters has been briefly evacuated as police investigated two vials of blood addressed to ex-President Donald Trump following his takeover of the national party apparatus.
I’ve worked in hospitals, and once we had a vacuum tube container (basically the kind that banks use for drive up banking) bust open in the middle of the line. They determined the blood was biohazard and considered to be infected with something nasty. We worked around it but one of my coworkers had to deal with a PC that got blood dripped in/on it.
We used PPE and put all the things in biohazard bags and sent it to surplus.
We evacuated the rooms that were affected but business continued everywhere else.
Blood in vials might be concerning but evacuation of a whole building for it is ridiculous.
Blood in vials might be concerning but evacuation of a whole building for it is ridiculous.
In short… this was a suspicious package, and it’s patently ridiculous to not treat it as a suspicious package.
work place accidents have different responses than (potential) terrorism. and hospitals have different responses than office buildings.
You’re working in the context of a hospital. You have (presumably) the necessary PPE and training to work around infectious agents and be safe. None of that’s going to be true in a generic office building. You’re going to be lucky if the cleaners have a box of gloves and there’s an expired, unchecked and pilfered OSHA cabinet with some bandages, gloves, a stupid CPR mask and a shit load of Tylenol and bandaids.
Hospitals have to weigh the risk and difficulty of moving patients, as well the risk of whatever potential attack is there. A generic office building is exceedingly unlikely to have patients that can’t be moved, or shouldn’t be moved, and it’s extremely unlikely that someone will die because they’re asked to wait outside as it would be with a hospital (in say, somebody coming from car accident.)
For office buildings, it’s simpler and safer to just dump the building than it is to have a more nuanced approach in large part because morons’ll get in the way of a proper search for other materials, effectively prolonging the amount of time it takes, and if there are other materials, everybody whose still in the building is at risk until the suspect material is found and disposed of.
I’ve worked in hospitals, and once we had a vacuum tube container (basically the kind that banks use for drive up banking) bust open in the middle of the line. They determined the blood was biohazard and considered to be infected with something nasty. We worked around it but one of my coworkers had to deal with a PC that got blood dripped in/on it.
We used PPE and put all the things in biohazard bags and sent it to surplus.
We evacuated the rooms that were affected but business continued everywhere else.
Blood in vials might be concerning but evacuation of a whole building for it is ridiculous.
In short… this was a suspicious package, and it’s patently ridiculous to not treat it as a suspicious package.
work place accidents have different responses than (potential) terrorism. and hospitals have different responses than office buildings.
You’re working in the context of a hospital. You have (presumably) the necessary PPE and training to work around infectious agents and be safe. None of that’s going to be true in a generic office building. You’re going to be lucky if the cleaners have a box of gloves and there’s an expired, unchecked and pilfered OSHA cabinet with some bandages, gloves, a stupid CPR mask and a shit load of Tylenol and bandaids.
Hospitals have to weigh the risk and difficulty of moving patients, as well the risk of whatever potential attack is there. A generic office building is exceedingly unlikely to have patients that can’t be moved, or shouldn’t be moved, and it’s extremely unlikely that someone will die because they’re asked to wait outside as it would be with a hospital (in say, somebody coming from car accident.)
For office buildings, it’s simpler and safer to just dump the building than it is to have a more nuanced approach in large part because morons’ll get in the way of a proper search for other materials, effectively prolonging the amount of time it takes, and if there are other materials, everybody whose still in the building is at risk until the suspect material is found and disposed of.