B.Before clearing her page on Tuesday, TikTok user hann.brooke95 hadn’t been shy about sharing even the most mundane details of her life with her 19,400 followers.
She put TikToks of herself cooking while breastfeeding, the tin of beans she used for nachos, and even the painstaking process of transferring her license as a pharmacy technician from Florida to Illinois, from filling out the application to applying a return address label and stamp on the envelope, to drop it in the mailbox in front of her house.
And the flood of mundane particulars would have continued if she hadn’t used TikTok to brag about stealing COVID-19 vaccination cards from her job so she and her husband could pass themselves off as vaccinated.
“I work at a pharmacy and took blank for me and my husband,” she wrote in another user’s TikTok comments about fake vaccination cards.
It wasn’t long before fellow users Becca Walker and Savannah Sparks zoomed in on that return address label and matched the name and address to public records of Hannah Brooke Hutchinson, 25, who is registered as a pharmacy technician in Illinois. Sparks then reported her to the same Illinois Board of Pharmacy that had just issued her license. The Illinois Board of Pharmacy told The Daily Beast it is not commenting on investigations.
‘I’m pretty sure you can’t steal 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 said in a TikTok she posted to calling her out.
Hutchinson did not respond to multiple calls and texts sent to her and her boyfriend’s numbers. But after Walker and Sparks posted TikToks about her, Hutchinson wiped her TikTok and deleted her Instagram and Facebook accounts. However, The Daily Beast was able to view the zoomed-in image and independently confirm Hutchinson’s details, including her license as a pharmacist technician, through public records.
Just before wiping her TikTok, she posted, “Stop hating on me! I don’t care what you guys think. I’ve done what’s best for my husband and me. Hours later, she posted another TikTok claiming to be a 16-year-old girl in the UK who did an experiment for her filmmaker father. But the TikToks, which go back a year, are tracked with her Facebook page husband, who has also been removed, where she appeared to be a mother in her twenties.
“Very sick people come into the pharmacy, so if you have a pharmacy employee lying about vaccination, everyone is at risk there,” Sparks, herself 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 seemingly trying to make his way into the vaccinated world, a trend that could have huge implications for the vulnerable Americans these workers serve.
As of Monday, Walker and Sparks have jointly posted more than half a dozen TikTok videos calling on health professionals who have spoken online about faking or attempting to falsify vaccine cards. And they say that other users have sent them dozens more tips that they have not been able to verify.
I’m just sitting here in awe, thinking about the implications of all this.
Dr. William Schaffner
“It’s overwhelming,” said Sparks. And, public health experts warn, it’s incredibly dangerous.
“I’m just sitting here in awe, thinking about the implications of all this,” said Dr. William Schaffner, a professor of preventive medicine and infectious diseases at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville. “Everyone who works in the healthcare environment naturally contributes to the safety of the environment, that is to say his own safety, that of his colleagues and the patients he serves.”
He said those caught would likely lose their jobs, if not their careers.
“We try to make the entire healthcare environment a COVID-free zone and by deliberately undermining that, that’s not unprofessional. It is extremely unethical and against the oath taken by a health professional when they accepted their degree. I imagine there would be license level implications. “
But the fear of professional reprisal hasn’t stopped some health professionals from turning the taboo topic of vaccine hesitation into power-hungry fodder.
Under Hutchinson’s original comment about squeezing blank cards, Texas nurse Courtney Long wrote, “May I pay you to send me some,” followed by a crying laughing emoji. Sparks was able to identify Long via the Instagram profile Long on her TikTok, where she said she was a nurse, and a linked Facebook profile, called Courtney Renee Long, where she also said she was a nurse. The Texas Board of Nursing website identifies a Courtney Renee Long as a licensed practical nurse.
“Is this you, Mrs. LPN?” Sparks said in a TikTok she called Long. “Ah, yes, the Texas Board of Nursing is going to see all this.”
Sparks said she reported Long to the Texas Board of Nursing. When contacted by The Daily Beast, the board said it would not comment on investigations. The Daily Beast made a number of attempts to reach Long, through a number linked to the phone numbers of family members and Pinterest, the only social media account in her name still in existence since Saturday. Calls to a number associated with her name and address were not answered.
Sparks and Walker say they also 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.
If it seems surprising that vaccine resistance would exist among medical professionals, even those with a strong background in science, Schaffer said it simply indicates how many Americans are still resistant to vaccination more than three months after the first puncture in the arms. went off the front line. health care workers. In February, a survey conducted by experts from Northwestern, Northeastern, Rutgers and Harvard universities found that 21 percent of health workers surveyed did not want to be vaccinated. The hesitation, which indicates skepticism about the vaccine, but not an outright reluctance to be vaccinated, was 37 percent.
“ There are a great many who are not only indifferent but disdainful of the vaccine, they just won’t get it. And those are the remnants of a political approach to Covid under the latest administration, ”said Schaffner. “It’s hard to let go of that bell.”
Of course, health workers aren’t the only ones among anti-vaxxers trying to pass off as vaccinated, and on Thursday, the Office of the Inspector General warned those vaccinated not to post images of their vaccination cards online due to an increase in fake cards.
As more Americans are vaccinated, anti-vaxxers have turned to social media to raise fears of a Biden-ruled future where people will be turned away from restaurants, hospitals, and even Target without a vaccination card.
“If they issue a ticket to verify you’ve been vaccinated, there’s apparently a reason for that. You may not be able to go shopping, travel, or buy underwear, ”TikTok user truevalor469 wrote from an armchair earlier this month. ‘Hmm. Sounds like the beginning. “
Backlash against Walker and Sparks’ crusade to discover anti-vaxxer health workers on TikTok has been harsh. On Wednesday, Sparks changed her phone number after another TikTok user found it and started harassing her. The threats were so bad that she had to issue a statement on her corporate website on Friday and close the reviews section.
So far, there are no government requirements to have a vaccination card, and Schaffner said he hasn’t heard from private companies needing them for their employees or customers. Yesterday, Rutgers University in New Jersey was the first university to require students to vaccinate, but Schaffner said the fears, widespread as they may be, are exaggerated for now.
“By misrepresenting themselves, they just avoid a lot of controversy,” he said. “So they do this reprehensible thing to avoid discomfort and explain themselves and be responsible for their actions.”
Walker said she suspects some users may not be as serious about faking their vaccinations as they are about chasing the influence of the taboo topic.
“If you put on a TikTok that says, ‘Oh, I don’t want to get vaccinated. Sell me a vaccination card, “that’s an automatic 100,000 views,” Walker told The Daily Beast.
A TikTok user by the name of linds3r responded to a viral TikTok about forging vaccination cards and wrote, “I have a template if you want that” and later, “lol I (have) made it 8 so far.” That user, Lindsey Stauffer, says on Facebook that she is a medical billing officer at the Department of Veterans Affairs in Lebanon, Pennsylvania. She also creates and sells anti-Biden and pro-Trump shirts from her Facebook page, which features several of the same images from her TikTok.
Reached by The Daily Beast, Stauffer admitted to writing the posts but denied making eight cards.
‘I didn’t write about making them. I said I know where to get one. You can go right to Google right now and get images about it yourself, ”Stauffer told The Daily Beast. ‘I don’t make anything. Everyone has access to it. “
Stauffer also denied living in Lebanon, although the phone number on her lists that as her address. She denied having worked at the VA, despite listing it as her employer on Facebook. (The Federal Office of Veteran’s Affairs did not immediately respond to requests for comment.) Stauffer also said she had already been vaccinated.
“So why should I make them?” she told The Daily Beast.
But even when medical professionals joke about faking their vaccinations, Schaffner said, it can cause problems.
“When people hear that health professionals do this, it undermines public confidence in these institutions and their ability to protect them,” Schaffner said.