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Illustration by Elizabeth Brockway\/The Daily Beast<\/p><\/div>\n
Larrison Campbell
\nYahoo!<\/p>\n
Before she wiped her page on Tuesday, TikTok user hann.brooke95 hadn\u2019t been shy about sharing even the most mundane details of her life with her 19,400 followers.<\/p>\n
She posted TikToks of herself cooking while breastfeeding, the can of beans she was using for nachos, and even the painstaking process of transferring her license as a pharmacy tech from Florida to Illinois: from filling out the application, to affixing a return address label and stamp on the envelope, to dropping it in the mailbox in front of her house.<\/p>\n
And the stream of everyday minutiae might have continued if she hadn\u2019t also used TikTok to brag about stealing COVID-19 vaccination cards from her job so she and her husband could pass themselves off as vaccinated.<\/p>\n
\u201cI work at a pharmacy and grabbed blank ones for me and my hubby,\u201d she wrote in the comments of another user\u2019s TikTok about fake vaccination cards.<\/p>\n
It didn\u2019t take long for fellow users Becca Walker and Savannah Sparks to zoom in on that return address label and match the name and address to public records for Hannah Brooke Hutchinson, 25, who is registered as a pharmacy tech in Illinois. Sparks then reported her to the same Illinois Board of Pharmacy that had just granted her license. The Illinois Board of Pharmacy told The Daily Beast it does not comment on investigations.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m pretty sure you\u2019re not supposed to steal from your job. And I\u2019m pretty sure you\u2019re not supposed to steal blank vaccination papers for COVID-19 to falsify information and claim that you and your husband were vaccinated when in actuality you were not,\u201d Walker said in a TikTok she posted to call her out.<\/p>\n
Hutchinson did not respond to multiple phone calls and texts sent to numbers associated with her and her boyfriend. But after Walker and Sparks posted TikToks about her, Hutchinson wiped her TikTok and deleted her Instagram and Facebook accounts. The Daily Beast, however, was able to review the zoomed-in image and independently confirm Hutchinson\u2019s details, including her pharmacy technician license, through public records.<\/p>\n
Just before she wiped her TikTok, she posted: \u201cStop hating on me! I don\u2019t care what any of you think. I did what is best for my husband and I.\u201d Hours later she posted another TikTok claiming to be a 16-year-old girl in the U.K. doing an experiment for her dad, who is a filmmaker. But the TikToks, which went back a year, tracked with her husband\u2019s Facebook page, which has also been deleted, where she appeared to be a mom in her twenties.<\/p>\n
\u201cVery sick people come into pharmacies, so when you have a pharmacy employee lying about being vaccinated, everyone there is at risk,\u201d Sparks, herself a pharmacist in Biloxi, Mississippi, told The Daily Beast. \u201cI don\u2019t want them in the profession.\u201d<\/p>\n
But Hutchinson is far from the only health-care professional seemingly trying to fake her way into the vaccinated world, a trend that could have huge implications for the vulnerable Americans these employees serve.<\/p>\n
Since Monday, Walker and Sparks have, combined, posted more than half a dozen TikTok videos calling out health-care workers who\u2019ve talked online about forging or attempting to forge vaccine cards. And they say other users have sent them dozens more tips they haven\u2019t been able to verify.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s overwhelming,\u201d Sparks said. And public health experts warn it\u2019s incredibly dangerous.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m just sitting here flummoxed, thinking about the implications of it all,\u201d said Dr. William Schaffner, a professor of preventive medicine and infectious disease at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville. \u201cAnyone who works in the health-care environment obviously contributes to the safety of the environment, which is their own safety, their colleagues\u2019 safety as well as the patients they serve.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said those caught doing it would likely lose their jobs, if not their careers.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re trying to make the whole health-care environment a COVID-free zone and by undermining that in a deliberate fashion, that\u2019s beyond unprofessional. It\u2019s profoundly unethical and contrary to whatever oath a health-care worker took when they accepted their degree. I would imagine there would be implications at the licensing level.\u201d<\/p>\n
But fear of professional reprisal hasn\u2019t kept some health-care workers from turning the taboo topic of vaccine hesitancy into clout-chasing fodder.<\/p>\n
Under Hutchinson\u2019s original comment about pinching blank cards, Texas nurse Courtney Long wrote, \u201cCan I pay you to ship a couple to me,\u201d followed by a crying-laughing emoji. Sparks was able to identify Long through the Instagram profile Long included on her TikTok, where she talked about being a nurse, and a linked Facebook profile, under the name Courtney Renee Long, where she also talked about being a nurse. The Texas Board of Nursing\u2019s website identifies a Courtney Renee Long as a Licensed Practical Nurse.<\/p>\n
\u201cIs this you, Miss LPN?\u201d Sparks said in a TikTok she made calling out Long. \u201cAh, yeah, the Texas Board of Nursing is gonna see all of this.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sparks said she reported Long to the Texas Board of Nursing. When contacted by The Daily Beast, the board said it does not comment on investigations. The Daily Beast made a number of attempts to reach Long, through a number associated with family members\u2019 phone numbers and Pinterest, the only social media account in her name that still existed as of Saturday. Calls to a number associated with her name and address were not returned.<\/p>\n
Sparks and Walker say they have also called out and reported an oncology nurse in Alabama, a trauma nurse at a children\u2019s hospital in Philadelphia, and a receptionist at an asthma clinic.<\/p>\n
If it seems surprising that vaccine resistance would exist among medical professionals, even those with a strong background in science, Schaffer said it simply highlights how many Americans are still resistant to vaccination, more than three months after the first jabs went into the arms of frontline health-care workers. In February, a survey conducted by experts from Northwestern, Northeastern, Rutgers and Harvard universities found that\u00a021 percent<\/a>\u00a0of health-care workers surveyed did not want to be vaccinated. Hesitancy, which indicates skepticism towards the vaccine but not an outright unwillingness to be vaccinated, was 37 percent.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s a large number who are not just indifferent but disdainful to the vaccine, they\u2019re just not going to get it. And that\u2019s the remnants of a political approach to COVID under the last administration,\u201d Schaffner said. \u201cIt\u2019s hard to unring that bell.\u201d<\/p>\n