8 ms·

In Philadelphia, a scandal erupts over vaccination startup led by 22-year-old

68 points by ystad 6y ago

spoonjim 6y ago
I know the death penalty is controversial, so let me just advocate for life without parole for committing a large-scale fraud like this against the health and lives of the public.
- jsiepkes 6y ago
  I agree that at some point you need to be able to say: "We just don't want person X to ever return in our society.". The big question is how do you implement such a thing? I think the English had the right idea by expelling them though I don't know if such a thing would still work in 2021...
  - thaumasiotes 6y ago
    Exile is one of the most traditional legal punishments. (Everywhere.) I think a couple of things tend to undermine it in the modern day: - Very free movement between regions. - No norm of distrust for strangers. In a traditional society, when someone new shows up, the default is that nobody trusts them to do anything. Any transaction that doesn't settle immediately can't be done, etc. But modern people are supposed to treat strangers as if they didn't just show up because they got ejected from their home. This means exiling people more or less corresponds to screwing over the hapless, trusting society they get exiled to. There is a solution implemented in the US, the sex offender registry, meant to address this exact problem. ("What if someone enters our community, but they're not trustworthy?") The problem is that the formalization of the sex offender registry (1) is the same everywhere -- not a big problem; the old norm of distrust for strangers doesn't differ in that regard -- and (2) supersedes the old system whereby a stranger could, over time, become trusted. You might personally trust someone who once urinated in public, but he'll never be officially trustworthy no matter what happens.
    - FooHentai 6y ago
      Add to this a lack of remaining frontiers - Used to be those were somewhere for people to strike out and make a truly new start. Perhaps if/when space becomes a true new frontier that dynamic will return.
    - bilbo0s 6y ago
      This means exiling people more or less corresponds to screwing over the hapless, trusting society they get exiled to There are no hapless, trusting societies any longer. The way the criminal justice system works, if we exile these guys running the vaccine scam, the nations we exile them to will immediately deport them back to the US. No one wants the criminals from other nations. So unless your crime is not terribly serious, exile won't work. It certainly won't work in this instance. This is not some trifling misdemeanor.
      - thaumasiotes 6y ago
        Exile does not usually remove someone from the country. Greek exiles pretty much just had to leave the city they were exiled from. Chinese exiles had to observe a minimum distance from the point of exile, which was set according to the severity of their crime. The British practice of transporting criminals to other continents is abnormal. We're talking about someone getting kicked out of Phoenix and moving to Austin.
    - redis_mlc 6y ago
      > There is a solution implemented in the US, the sex offender registry, meant to address this exact problem. Well, you glossed over a lot in that one sentence, namely: 1) Prosecutions are usually plea-bargained in the US, so no proof is required that the accused actually did anything to get on the list. 2) The average person cannot afford a defense, so again the registry might mean they didn't have $100k - $200k for legal fees. 3) How are incorrect entries updated? 4) Since being on that list geo-fences the accused from areas of town, they end up living under bridges on the outskirts of town. Is that what we as a society want, especially given the above? 5) "Sex offender" in the US includes an 18-yo receiving a nude photo from his 17-yo gf, which is the most common category. That's some level of puritanical.
  - esja 6y ago
    Human rights law in many countries prevents their citizens from being made stateless. The UK has tried to strip the citizenship of some ISIL members, e.g. Shamima Begum, but it’s tied up in court: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shamima_Begum https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shamima_Begum
  - spoonjim 6y ago
    You implement it by putting them in prison for the rest of their lives. You could just cordon off an island Alcatraz style, helicopter drop in food and supplies, and let them figure out their own shit.
    - Mtinie 6y ago
      You’ve generally described the colonization of Australia by the British. https://www.digitalpanopticon.org/Convicts_and_the_Colonisation_of_Australia,_1788-1868 https://www.digitalpanopticon.org/Convicts_and_the_Colonisat...
AnonC 6y ago
Reads like a disaster in a loop. > Doroshin told NBC's "Today" show that his company didn't think like a traditional medical institution. "We're engineers, we're scientists, computer scientists, we're cybersecurity nerds. We think a little differently than people in health care do." > "We took the entire model and just threw it out the window," Doroshin added. "We said to hell with all of that. We're going to completely build on a new model that is based on a factory." It’s mind boggling how many times we see this belief that some groups (among many) who are thought to be prone to analytical thinking can solve problems and “throw out” knowledge, learnings, experience and wisdom from core groups who have been in the space for longer. There is a space for disruption, thinking outside the box, etc., in every field, but many a times this seems to be based solely on hubris.
- aaronblohowiak 6y ago
  A degree of hubris, yes. An irreverence, certainly. It is necessary to not operate within the intellectual framework of a field in order to revolutionize it. Incrementally modifying the framework is extremely difficult because there are usually networks of reinforcement of the current structure (or it wouldn’t be stable..) so a non-incremental “jump” is required to climb a different hill. This jump is mythologized as starting from scratch, though often times most of the weirdness goes away and only the essentially advantageous difference remains as the company or project matures.
  - arcturus17 6y ago
    I think one of the key points is that you can’t tell if a system needs evolutionary (incremental) or revolutionary change unless you analyze it in depth. “It’s not working” as a superficial observation of effect is not good enough - it may be on the cusp of working with a few tweaks, which would be much more efficient than starting over. As with any idea, throwing things out of the window can be good if it’s complemented with a set of clauses (“we’re starting over because of a, b and c”). The concept on its own is likely hubris or misguided based on the false pretense that revolution for the sake of revolution is good.
    - 6y ago
ipsum2 6y ago
I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, the CEO sounds like a fraudster and has bungled appointments, leaving people disappointed. On the other hand, he did get a decent amount (the website claims 6,000 people over 5 days) of people vaccinated, and has real medical staff on hand: http://web.archive.org/web/20210115174959/https://phillyfightingcovid.com/team http://web.archive.org/web/20210115174959/https://phillyfigh... (the page has been pulled down), so its not completely fradulent. Additionally, charging insurance companies for the shot isn't bad, if the staff / space rentals need to get paid. I'm not confident hospitals are doing much better in getting people vaccinated.
- Melting_Harps 6y ago
  > I'm not confident hospitals are doing much better in getting people vaccinated. They're not, Ralph's (SoCal's version of Kroger/Safeway neighborhood grocery stores) just had a lot of their vaccines pulled in LA County [0], which is perhaps the worst place hit by COVID in the US by case-death ratio, and many people who were scheduled for thier vaccine (elderly who are the reason ICUs are at 0% capacity) were just told 'oh well, better luck next time.' This entire situation is a shit show, and shows why the need to reform it exists. I agree on the mixed feelings; for all the entrepreneur porn thrown around here and the constant mental masturbation about how 'fail fast and iterate' type strategies are the corner stone of any successful business amongst the HN Silicon Valley crowds you cant have it both ways and wag your finger when things go wrong--they always do in the beginning with growing pains. I think a lot of these same people that shake their heads and stroke their chins in disapproval from the sidelines equate their situation working for an established FAANG (who were once a startup long before they ever got there) think they know what its like to go into uncharted territory and break ground and actually disrupt something we all know is broken in the US: The Medical Industrial Complex and its affiliate modes of operation. To be honest, I think the issue was the Philadelphia health department not doing it's due diligence and only giving them a platform without any legally binding contractual oblations and standards (not rules) and benchmarks to operate under and adhere to... like not not taing the vaccine home with you and giving it to your GF! But even having someone from the Heath department at least oversee and have a minor assistant operations role or something would have gone a long way when they gave away a portion of their (incredibly scarce) vaccine in the middle of a f'ing pandemic! > By January 9th, Doroshin had a deal with the Philadelphia Department of Public Health and Mayor Jim Kenney's administration. The city never signed a formal contract with Philly Fighting Covid or gave the organization any money, but did provide its unofficial sanction, and publicity. Most importantly, the city turned over part of its vaccine allotment to the group, and helped them find recipients by sharing lists of residents who were newly eligible for the vaccine, based on the city's own prioritization scheme. Entrepreneurs, but founders in particular, are overly optimistic (borderline delusional at times, and I speak from first hand experience) and are incredibly risk prone people by nature and often take on way more than they can deliver under even ideal conditions, so under a pandemic which you see has a death toll that increases on an hourly/daily basis and represents an affected family(s) and is the reason why a lot of the country has been locked down and suffering a damn near economic depression now for almost a year, its clear to see this is far from ideal conditions so some basic contingencies should have been made. With that said, I agree, the numbers by comparison to the mass vaccination at Coor's Stadium by UChealth, who only did a 1000 in a weekenm, are not bad because even a small state like CO is struggling to match those numbers and they were the first place to report cases of that 2nd strain and recently opened up it's businesses and schools, thus increasing the need more than anyone else. They're suppoed to do 10,000 this weekend, and with better weather in Denver they might just get it, but it that took a massive coordinated effort and way larger budget, team and infrastructure. Shoutout to the Philly Fighting Covid team for this undertaking under immense pressure! And a personal thanks for trying to take some pressure off the over worked physicians and nurses who when this is all said and done will have a long road to recovery in physical but specifically mental health. And while I'm sure people here (and elsewhere) are going to point fingers and judge, just ask yourself: what has been your biggest achievement during this pandemic, especially for those you work remotely from the comfort of your home and doing the supposed 2-3hours of 'actual work a day' a mid tier SWE does in a day. A sentiment that so many here agreed they do most days all while getting paid obscene salaries. I'm sure as hell it wasn't as impressive as mass vaccinations under immense pressure. The way some people are viewing this you'd think they were Theranos 2.0, when people are in fact getting the vaccine. 0: https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-01-28/ralphs-cancels-covid-19-vaccine-appointments https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-01-28/ralphs-c... PS: I don't care if you downvote me as I don't care about your fake points, but GP raised some valid points and in the time I typed all this out with citations he was dropped to the bottom and downvoted into oblivion with no rebuttal. That's a really pathetic thing to do at HN in what is supposed to be at its CORE a hub for entrepreneurs to chat and discuss ideas, not obscure people's opinion who you don't agree with.
rendall 6y ago
...'his company didn't think like a traditional medical institution. "We're engineers, we're scientists, computer scientists, we're cybersecurity nerds. We think a little differently than people in health care do." "We took the entire model and just threw it out the window," Doroshin added. "We said to hell with all of that. We're going to completely build on a new model...' These kinds of statements from founders should always be a red flag. Dig deep, if you hear some variant of domain experts are hidebound and dogmatic. The parable of Chesterton's Fence[1] applies. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G._K._Chesterton#Chesterton's_fence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G._K._Chesterton#Chesterton's_...
- oji0hub 6y ago
  From the wiki: "Chesterton's fence is the principle that reforms should not be made until the reasoning behind the existing state of affairs is understood." Ok great. "The quotation is from Chesterton's 1929 book, The Thing: Why I am a Catholic" So, Catholicism?
  - esja 6y ago
    What do you mean?
    - nytgop77 6y ago
      Flavor of ad hominem attack I guess.
      - oji0hub 6y ago
        For starters that would require actually mentioning the person...
  - birdsbirdsbirds 6y ago
    Well, do they abide to Chesterton's fence by themselves? [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filioque https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filioque
  - 6y ago
ck425 6y ago
Maybe this is cultural difference between the UK and the US but who the hell thinks it's ok to be blatantly profiting from a vaccine rollout? Particularly when the vaccine is being provided for free by government. Covering costs is over thing, blatant profiteering is disgusting.
- hntrader 6y ago
  So what if vaccine makers and distributors make a few billion in profits in return for saving the world from economic ruin and millions of deaths (and I'm not talking about the specific company in the OP). Let's pick a more deserving target for outrage.
  - ck425 6y ago
    I'm referring the rollout of the vaccines not the creation. That's a different issue with no easy answer. Again this may just be a cultural difference. Healthcare being free at point of use is a core tenant of the NHS.
    - jfk13 6y ago
      core tenet, not tenant
- esja 6y ago
  Even the expensive COVID vaccines are an absolute bargain compared to all the costs associated with not having them (economic, social, health, geopolitical...). The EU has just created a huge problem for themselves (which will result in extra people dying) by insisting on paying 2 dollars per dose for the AZ vaccine instead of 3 dollars or whatever. If you do the maths on that, it’s hard to find a rational or humane justification for trying to “save money” this way. Israel by contrast decided to pay double the list price for their vaccines, and half their population is now vaccinated. https://www.politico.eu/article/europe-coronavirus-vaccine-struggle-pfizer-biontech-astrazeneca/ https://www.politico.eu/article/europe-coronavirus-vaccine-s...
  - 6y ago
vmception 6y ago
Him taking vaccines home to vaccinate his girlfriend should be its own article, discussing exactly what happened. We’ve already seen in a dozen cities what happens if there are thawed vaccines that day: use them. The rest doesn't seem different enough from whats happening everywhere to really warrant Farley’s PR campaign here to prevent his resignation. Everywhere has bungled scheduling errors or vaccines logistics leaving extra thawed vaccines that need to be used that day irregardless of the order. I was shocked reading this article but stepping back I just cant get behind this, my pitch fork is put away. I bet the CEO wasn't even wrong about the irrelevant best practice that was cited in this article. Testing is different than vaccinations. The article doesn't distinguish that well except for “ahh theyre a for-profit company now omg oh noes.” A medical company with no actual contract with the municipality making money? How is that even a footnote. Their insurance reimbursal plan had to pivot who gives a fuck. Like I said its just not different enough. Figure out what their logistical problems are and fix them. The end. This honestly reads like Farley’s PR agent trying to prevent his forced resignation. My PR agent would typically make articles not seem to be about me by mentioning me/my organizations deep in the listicle or at the end of the article, and we would put a competitor at the top of the listicle to deflect the idea it was advertising to begin with, and then use the coincidence of being mentioned in the same article together to open a dialogue. We didnt actually care about engagement or the clout of being in a particular publication, it was all backdoor ploys. The commonality here is that the city is “competing” with this organization and confusing everyone, within a week of one logistical issue. This reads like that to me. This isn't worth our attention.
- rriepe 6y ago
  What a great comment! The approach is very Musk top-to-bottom. You win by being the lightning rod.
  - vmception 6y ago
    You may be interested to know that consensus has flipped several times on this comment, and on every others comment that didnt completely agree with the forced outrage. People are using their heads and finding the perspectives insightful.
anticapit 6y ago
With his arrogant “we’re engineers let’s disrupt everything we don’t understand” attitude, he should really apply to Ycombinator. If not, I’m sure mrs bannister or peter thiel would fund him.
- zemvpferreira 6y ago
  Making the point again that this is not an engineer but a 22-year old psych student.
  - anticapit 6y ago
    But the attitude is very ycombinator.
    - zemvpferreira 6y ago
      There's a subsect of megalomanial opportunists who are also engineers, no questions there.
wjnc 6y ago
I'll just go out and give a contrarian view. In The Netherlands all this and more happened under direct government supervision. We are on the lowest ladder of vaccinations, the PII of all tested individuals seem to have leaked / be stolen, with a minister in active denial and no view on improvements any time soon. The last time we did a vaccination that went well (H1N1) the army was closely involved for logistics, not primarily the bureaucracy. The bureaucracy actually had meetings with those in the lead back then and decided against using their experiences. The minister proudly mentioned starting to think about the vaccination policy in December. My point being ... They came pretty far for a startup 'led by a 22-yr old' (ageism) and seem to have done a lot of things right, primarily starting planning very early. The city of Philadelphia could have fared worse. Perhaps the suggestion of a pivot in the money grab direction is the worst ethically, but I'd like to see more facts. This is mostly a hit piece. Without financial incentives in play, at least in one country professional bureaucrats have fared lots worse than this startup.
- rendall 6y ago
  > This is mostly a hit piece. I did notice that NPR did not really tell his side of this tale, but added a few selected quotes that were rather inflammatory in this context. e.g. "In a press conference at his apartment building Friday, Doroshin called the city's decision to dissolve the partnership "dirty power politics" and alleged it was part of a political conspiracy. He said that if given the chance, he wouldn't have done anything differently. It's a quote that sounds like he's a bitter, self-absorbed, crazy person. Could indeed be true, but given that the Principle of Charity is not a journalistic practice, we did not learn his argument and cannot judge for ourselves. Unfortunately, NPR is considered among the best of US news.
- duxup 6y ago
  >This is mostly a hit piece. What makes that article a "hit piece"?
cratermoon 6y ago
"the company's new privacy policy, which would have allowed it to sell patient data."

68 points by ystad 6y ago

I know the death penalty is controversial, so let me just advocate for life without parole for committing a large-scale fraud like this against the health and lives of the public.

jsiepkes 6y ago
I agree that at some point you need to be able to say: "We just don't want person X to ever return in our society.". The big question is how do you implement such a thing? I think the English had the right idea by expelling them though I don't know if such a thing would still work in 2021...
- thaumasiotes 6y ago
  Exile is one of the most traditional legal punishments. (Everywhere.) I think a couple of things tend to undermine it in the modern day: - Very free movement between regions. - No norm of distrust for strangers. In a traditional society, when someone new shows up, the default is that nobody trusts them to do anything. Any transaction that doesn't settle immediately can't be done, etc. But modern people are supposed to treat strangers as if they didn't just show up because they got ejected from their home. This means exiling people more or less corresponds to screwing over the hapless, trusting society they get exiled to. There is a solution implemented in the US, the sex offender registry, meant to address this exact problem. ("What if someone enters our community, but they're not trustworthy?") The problem is that the formalization of the sex offender registry (1) is the same everywhere -- not a big problem; the old norm of distrust for strangers doesn't differ in that regard -- and (2) supersedes the old system whereby a stranger could, over time, become trusted. You might personally trust someone who once urinated in public, but he'll never be officially trustworthy no matter what happens.
  - FooHentai 6y ago
    Add to this a lack of remaining frontiers - Used to be those were somewhere for people to strike out and make a truly new start. Perhaps if/when space becomes a true new frontier that dynamic will return.
  - bilbo0s 6y ago
    This means exiling people more or less corresponds to screwing over the hapless, trusting society they get exiled to There are no hapless, trusting societies any longer. The way the criminal justice system works, if we exile these guys running the vaccine scam, the nations we exile them to will immediately deport them back to the US. No one wants the criminals from other nations. So unless your crime is not terribly serious, exile won't work. It certainly won't work in this instance. This is not some trifling misdemeanor.
    - thaumasiotes 6y ago
      Exile does not usually remove someone from the country. Greek exiles pretty much just had to leave the city they were exiled from. Chinese exiles had to observe a minimum distance from the point of exile, which was set according to the severity of their crime. The British practice of transporting criminals to other continents is abnormal. We're talking about someone getting kicked out of Phoenix and moving to Austin.
  - redis_mlc 6y ago
    > There is a solution implemented in the US, the sex offender registry, meant to address this exact problem. Well, you glossed over a lot in that one sentence, namely: 1) Prosecutions are usually plea-bargained in the US, so no proof is required that the accused actually did anything to get on the list. 2) The average person cannot afford a defense, so again the registry might mean they didn't have $100k - $200k for legal fees. 3) How are incorrect entries updated? 4) Since being on that list geo-fences the accused from areas of town, they end up living under bridges on the outskirts of town. Is that what we as a society want, especially given the above? 5) "Sex offender" in the US includes an 18-yo receiving a nude photo from his 17-yo gf, which is the most common category. That's some level of puritanical.
- esja 6y ago
  Human rights law in many countries prevents their citizens from being made stateless. The UK has tried to strip the citizenship of some ISIL members, e.g. Shamima Begum, but it’s tied up in court: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shamima_Begum https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shamima_Begum
- spoonjim 6y ago
  You implement it by putting them in prison for the rest of their lives. You could just cordon off an island Alcatraz style, helicopter drop in food and supplies, and let them figure out their own shit.
  - Mtinie 6y ago
    You’ve generally described the colonization of Australia by the British. https://www.digitalpanopticon.org/Convicts_and_the_Colonisation_of_Australia,_1788-1868 https://www.digitalpanopticon.org/Convicts_and_the_Colonisat...

AnonC 6y ago

Reads like a disaster in a loop. > Doroshin told NBC's "Today" show that his company didn't think like a traditional medical institution. "We're engineers, we're scientists, computer scientists, we're cybersecurity nerds. We think a little differently than people in health care do." > "We took the entire model and just threw it out the window," Doroshin added. "We said to hell with all of that. We're going to completely build on a new model that is based on a factory." It’s mind boggling how many times we see this belief that some groups (among many) who are thought to be prone to analytical thinking can solve problems and “throw out” knowledge, learnings, experience and wisdom from core groups who have been in the space for longer. There is a space for disruption, thinking outside the box, etc., in every field, but many a times this seems to be based solely on hubris.

aaronblohowiak 6y ago
A degree of hubris, yes. An irreverence, certainly. It is necessary to not operate within the intellectual framework of a field in order to revolutionize it. Incrementally modifying the framework is extremely difficult because there are usually networks of reinforcement of the current structure (or it wouldn’t be stable..) so a non-incremental “jump” is required to climb a different hill. This jump is mythologized as starting from scratch, though often times most of the weirdness goes away and only the essentially advantageous difference remains as the company or project matures.
- arcturus17 6y ago
  I think one of the key points is that you can’t tell if a system needs evolutionary (incremental) or revolutionary change unless you analyze it in depth. “It’s not working” as a superficial observation of effect is not good enough - it may be on the cusp of working with a few tweaks, which would be much more efficient than starting over. As with any idea, throwing things out of the window can be good if it’s complemented with a set of clauses (“we’re starting over because of a, b and c”). The concept on its own is likely hubris or misguided based on the false pretense that revolution for the sake of revolution is good.
  - 6y ago

ipsum2 6y ago

I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, the CEO sounds like a fraudster and has bungled appointments, leaving people disappointed. On the other hand, he did get a decent amount (the website claims 6,000 people over 5 days) of people vaccinated, and has real medical staff on hand: http://web.archive.org/web/20210115174959/https://phillyfightingcovid.com/team http://web.archive.org/web/20210115174959/https://phillyfigh... (the page has been pulled down), so its not completely fradulent. Additionally, charging insurance companies for the shot isn't bad, if the staff / space rentals need to get paid. I'm not confident hospitals are doing much better in getting people vaccinated.

Melting_Harps 6y ago
> I'm not confident hospitals are doing much better in getting people vaccinated. They're not, Ralph's (SoCal's version of Kroger/Safeway neighborhood grocery stores) just had a lot of their vaccines pulled in LA County [0], which is perhaps the worst place hit by COVID in the US by case-death ratio, and many people who were scheduled for thier vaccine (elderly who are the reason ICUs are at 0% capacity) were just told 'oh well, better luck next time.' This entire situation is a shit show, and shows why the need to reform it exists. I agree on the mixed feelings; for all the entrepreneur porn thrown around here and the constant mental masturbation about how 'fail fast and iterate' type strategies are the corner stone of any successful business amongst the HN Silicon Valley crowds you cant have it both ways and wag your finger when things go wrong--they always do in the beginning with growing pains. I think a lot of these same people that shake their heads and stroke their chins in disapproval from the sidelines equate their situation working for an established FAANG (who were once a startup long before they ever got there) think they know what its like to go into uncharted territory and break ground and actually disrupt something we all know is broken in the US: The Medical Industrial Complex and its affiliate modes of operation. To be honest, I think the issue was the Philadelphia health department not doing it's due diligence and only giving them a platform without any legally binding contractual oblations and standards (not rules) and benchmarks to operate under and adhere to... like not not taing the vaccine home with you and giving it to your GF! But even having someone from the Heath department at least oversee and have a minor assistant operations role or something would have gone a long way when they gave away a portion of their (incredibly scarce) vaccine in the middle of a f'ing pandemic! > By January 9th, Doroshin had a deal with the Philadelphia Department of Public Health and Mayor Jim Kenney's administration. The city never signed a formal contract with Philly Fighting Covid or gave the organization any money, but did provide its unofficial sanction, and publicity. Most importantly, the city turned over part of its vaccine allotment to the group, and helped them find recipients by sharing lists of residents who were newly eligible for the vaccine, based on the city's own prioritization scheme. Entrepreneurs, but founders in particular, are overly optimistic (borderline delusional at times, and I speak from first hand experience) and are incredibly risk prone people by nature and often take on way more than they can deliver under even ideal conditions, so under a pandemic which you see has a death toll that increases on an hourly/daily basis and represents an affected family(s) and is the reason why a lot of the country has been locked down and suffering a damn near economic depression now for almost a year, its clear to see this is far from ideal conditions so some basic contingencies should have been made. With that said, I agree, the numbers by comparison to the mass vaccination at Coor's Stadium by UChealth, who only did a 1000 in a weekenm, are not bad because even a small state like CO is struggling to match those numbers and they were the first place to report cases of that 2nd strain and recently opened up it's businesses and schools, thus increasing the need more than anyone else. They're suppoed to do 10,000 this weekend, and with better weather in Denver they might just get it, but it that took a massive coordinated effort and way larger budget, team and infrastructure. Shoutout to the Philly Fighting Covid team for this undertaking under immense pressure! And a personal thanks for trying to take some pressure off the over worked physicians and nurses who when this is all said and done will have a long road to recovery in physical but specifically mental health. And while I'm sure people here (and elsewhere) are going to point fingers and judge, just ask yourself: what has been your biggest achievement during this pandemic, especially for those you work remotely from the comfort of your home and doing the supposed 2-3hours of 'actual work a day' a mid tier SWE does in a day. A sentiment that so many here agreed they do most days all while getting paid obscene salaries. I'm sure as hell it wasn't as impressive as mass vaccinations under immense pressure. The way some people are viewing this you'd think they were Theranos 2.0, when people are in fact getting the vaccine. 0: https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-01-28/ralphs-cancels-covid-19-vaccine-appointments https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-01-28/ralphs-c... PS: I don't care if you downvote me as I don't care about your fake points, but GP raised some valid points and in the time I typed all this out with citations he was dropped to the bottom and downvoted into oblivion with no rebuttal. That's a really pathetic thing to do at HN in what is supposed to be at its CORE a hub for entrepreneurs to chat and discuss ideas, not obscure people's opinion who you don't agree with.

rendall 6y ago

...'his company didn't think like a traditional medical institution. "We're engineers, we're scientists, computer scientists, we're cybersecurity nerds. We think a little differently than people in health care do." "We took the entire model and just threw it out the window," Doroshin added. "We said to hell with all of that. We're going to completely build on a new model...' These kinds of statements from founders should always be a red flag. Dig deep, if you hear some variant of domain experts are hidebound and dogmatic. The parable of Chesterton's Fence[1] applies. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G._K._Chesterton#Chesterton's_fence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G._K._Chesterton#Chesterton's_...

oji0hub 6y ago
From the wiki: "Chesterton's fence is the principle that reforms should not be made until the reasoning behind the existing state of affairs is understood." Ok great. "The quotation is from Chesterton's 1929 book, The Thing: Why I am a Catholic" So, Catholicism?
- esja 6y ago
  What do you mean?
  - nytgop77 6y ago
    Flavor of ad hominem attack I guess.
    - oji0hub 6y ago
      For starters that would require actually mentioning the person...
- birdsbirdsbirds 6y ago
  Well, do they abide to Chesterton's fence by themselves? [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filioque https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filioque
- 6y ago

ck425 6y ago

Maybe this is cultural difference between the UK and the US but who the hell thinks it's ok to be blatantly profiting from a vaccine rollout? Particularly when the vaccine is being provided for free by government. Covering costs is over thing, blatant profiteering is disgusting.

hntrader 6y ago
So what if vaccine makers and distributors make a few billion in profits in return for saving the world from economic ruin and millions of deaths (and I'm not talking about the specific company in the OP). Let's pick a more deserving target for outrage.
- ck425 6y ago
  I'm referring the rollout of the vaccines not the creation. That's a different issue with no easy answer. Again this may just be a cultural difference. Healthcare being free at point of use is a core tenant of the NHS.
  - jfk13 6y ago
    core tenet, not tenant
esja 6y ago
Even the expensive COVID vaccines are an absolute bargain compared to all the costs associated with not having them (economic, social, health, geopolitical...). The EU has just created a huge problem for themselves (which will result in extra people dying) by insisting on paying 2 dollars per dose for the AZ vaccine instead of 3 dollars or whatever. If you do the maths on that, it’s hard to find a rational or humane justification for trying to “save money” this way. Israel by contrast decided to pay double the list price for their vaccines, and half their population is now vaccinated. https://www.politico.eu/article/europe-coronavirus-vaccine-struggle-pfizer-biontech-astrazeneca/ https://www.politico.eu/article/europe-coronavirus-vaccine-s...
- 6y ago

vmception 6y ago

Him taking vaccines home to vaccinate his girlfriend should be its own article, discussing exactly what happened. We’ve already seen in a dozen cities what happens if there are thawed vaccines that day: use them. The rest doesn't seem different enough from whats happening everywhere to really warrant Farley’s PR campaign here to prevent his resignation. Everywhere has bungled scheduling errors or vaccines logistics leaving extra thawed vaccines that need to be used that day irregardless of the order. I was shocked reading this article but stepping back I just cant get behind this, my pitch fork is put away. I bet the CEO wasn't even wrong about the irrelevant best practice that was cited in this article. Testing is different than vaccinations. The article doesn't distinguish that well except for “ahh theyre a for-profit company now omg oh noes.” A medical company with no actual contract with the municipality making money? How is that even a footnote. Their insurance reimbursal plan had to pivot who gives a fuck. Like I said its just not different enough. Figure out what their logistical problems are and fix them. The end. This honestly reads like Farley’s PR agent trying to prevent his forced resignation. My PR agent would typically make articles not seem to be about me by mentioning me/my organizations deep in the listicle or at the end of the article, and we would put a competitor at the top of the listicle to deflect the idea it was advertising to begin with, and then use the coincidence of being mentioned in the same article together to open a dialogue. We didnt actually care about engagement or the clout of being in a particular publication, it was all backdoor ploys. The commonality here is that the city is “competing” with this organization and confusing everyone, within a week of one logistical issue. This reads like that to me. This isn't worth our attention.

rriepe 6y ago
What a great comment! The approach is very Musk top-to-bottom. You win by being the lightning rod.
- vmception 6y ago
  You may be interested to know that consensus has flipped several times on this comment, and on every others comment that didnt completely agree with the forced outrage. People are using their heads and finding the perspectives insightful.

anticapit 6y ago

With his arrogant “we’re engineers let’s disrupt everything we don’t understand” attitude, he should really apply to Ycombinator. If not, I’m sure mrs bannister or peter thiel would fund him.

zemvpferreira 6y ago
Making the point again that this is not an engineer but a 22-year old psych student.
- anticapit 6y ago
  But the attitude is very ycombinator.
  - zemvpferreira 6y ago
    There's a subsect of megalomanial opportunists who are also engineers, no questions there.

wjnc 6y ago

I'll just go out and give a contrarian view. In The Netherlands all this and more happened under direct government supervision. We are on the lowest ladder of vaccinations, the PII of all tested individuals seem to have leaked / be stolen, with a minister in active denial and no view on improvements any time soon. The last time we did a vaccination that went well (H1N1) the army was closely involved for logistics, not primarily the bureaucracy. The bureaucracy actually had meetings with those in the lead back then and decided against using their experiences. The minister proudly mentioned starting to think about the vaccination policy in December. My point being ... They came pretty far for a startup 'led by a 22-yr old' (ageism) and seem to have done a lot of things right, primarily starting planning very early. The city of Philadelphia could have fared worse. Perhaps the suggestion of a pivot in the money grab direction is the worst ethically, but I'd like to see more facts. This is mostly a hit piece. Without financial incentives in play, at least in one country professional bureaucrats have fared lots worse than this startup.

rendall 6y ago
> This is mostly a hit piece. I did notice that NPR did not really tell his side of this tale, but added a few selected quotes that were rather inflammatory in this context. e.g. "In a press conference at his apartment building Friday, Doroshin called the city's decision to dissolve the partnership "dirty power politics" and alleged it was part of a political conspiracy. He said that if given the chance, he wouldn't have done anything differently. It's a quote that sounds like he's a bitter, self-absorbed, crazy person. Could indeed be true, but given that the Principle of Charity is not a journalistic practice, we did not learn his argument and cannot judge for ourselves. Unfortunately, NPR is considered among the best of US news.
duxup 6y ago
>This is mostly a hit piece. What makes that article a "hit piece"?

cratermoon 6y ago

"the company's new privacy policy, which would have allowed it to sell patient data."