Parsons said Dean became ill and went to the hospital because he was having trouble breathing just over two weeks ago. He was intubated and developed pneumonia and then a serious bacterial infection, MRSA.
My best explanation that's NOT a conspiracy theory is that there are SO MANY whistleblowers for Boeing that natural causes is going to take out a lot of them before the trials are done.
My best explanation that's NOT a conspiracy theory is that there are SO MANY whistleblowers for Boeing that natural causes is going to take out a lot of them before the trials are done.
https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=P%5BX%3E%3D1%5D+for+X%7EB%2832%2C0.015702%29 https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=P%5BX%3E%3D2%5D+for+X%7EB%2832%2C0.015702%29 edit: I misread their ages! If...
It's unusual, but not outside the realm of possibility. Coincidentally, both of these guys were 62 years old. For simplicity though, let's assume that makes them representative -- I kind of expect that the sort of senior engineers that would be filing these complaints are heading towards retirement and are of the old guard's safety focused cohort anyway. According to the SSA's actuarial tables the chance of a random 62 year old dying in any given year is 0.015702. If there are in fact 32 of them, the chance of at least one of them dying is ~39.7%, and the chance of at least two of them dying is still 9.0%.
edit: I misread their ages! If we pick age 54 (the average of their two ages), and an annual death rate of 0.008394 it works out to 23.6% chance of one or more dying, or 3.0% chance of two or more dying.
Also we shouldn't ignore the influence of stress. Whistleblowers who have spent years fighting a huge company like Boeing, defending their reputation against slander, etc. have been living in a...
Also we shouldn't ignore the influence of stress. Whistleblowers who have spent years fighting a huge company like Boeing, defending their reputation against slander, etc. have been living in a high-stress condition for years. Plus years before of watching the company's criminal behavior, stressing and debating whether you should risk your whole career and come forward. That kind of high-stress life can certainly have an impact on health.
I would point out a big problem with your math though. Your math assumes that all of them are 62 years old, or at least an average of 62. It's quite possible these two guys are substantially older than the average whistleblower age. I would expect the average age to be something more like 40-45, considering the age of the workforce.
Former Boeing employee here. In addition to the stress others have mentioned, I would also point out that there were quite a few divisions that tended to reward/promote unhealthy attachments to...
Former Boeing employee here. In addition to the stress others have mentioned, I would also point out that there were quite a few divisions that tended to reward/promote unhealthy attachments to work. I saw far too many coworkers choosing to work long hours, skip lunch and breaks, etc for some imaginary moving-target goals. This is just speculation, but I would not be surprised if lot of the whistleblowers are seeing diminished health as a side effect of years of unhealthy work habits.
The whistleblowers are also under immense stress, so the risk of stroke or suicide is much higher, especially in their demographic. But somehow I'm happy enough with the growing public distrust of...
The whistleblowers are also under immense stress, so the risk of stroke or suicide is much higher, especially in their demographic.
But somehow I'm happy enough with the growing public distrust of filthy companies.
I'm not taking this seriously, but Coca-Cola death squads are a joke/reality. I would not be surprised that like poison-laced (polonium?) tea used in assassination attempts, there might be some...
I'm not taking this seriously, but Coca-Cola death squads are a joke/reality.
I would not be surprised that like poison-laced (polonium?) tea used in assassination attempts, there might be some drugs where it might be plausible that it impairs the victim's respiratory function, leading to any manner of medical issues, and eventually causing their death.
Sure, but this is Spirit Airlines, which was/is tettering on bankruptcy and looking towards a merger with JetBlue to survive, assassinating someone in the United States. The thing about Polonium...
Sure, but this is Spirit Airlines, which was/is tettering on bankruptcy and looking towards a merger with JetBlue to survive, assassinating someone in the United States.
The thing about Polonium is that it kills you really quickly. The person in question here was in medical care for weeks - it’s unlikely that “some other drug which causes pneumonia-like symptoms” would be uncaught. Pneumonia is a very well known ailment, they’d do a sputum test to diagnose so there’s no way it wasn’t actually pneumonia, and you definitely wouldn’t choose a route that would so easily get you caught if you were to poison someone.
Pneumonia can be caused by quite a few different pathogens, though -- it just refers to an infection of the air sacs in the lungs -- so I presume proper conspiracy theories would assume some sort...
Pneumonia can be caused by quite a few different pathogens, though -- it just refers to an infection of the air sacs in the lungs -- so I presume proper conspiracy theories would assume some sort of biological agent rather than a drug. Yes, it's more likely he just caught something in the wild, but it's not medically implausible the way some sort of poisoning would be.
You're not wrong, but we know what the usual causes of pneumonia are. If he had a novel strain of something, that would actually cause an uproar in the medical space - just like Coronavirus, after...
You're not wrong, but we know what the usual causes of pneumonia are. If he had a novel strain of something, that would actually cause an uproar in the medical space - just like Coronavirus, after all. Especially since he died of it, there'd no doubt be serious research into what he had, how contagious it is, etc.
Since there was none, I assume that it was a pretty routine pneumonia infection.
Honestly I think the article title is doing a lot of work there. He’s not even accusing Boeing. Spirit makes parts for Boeing and Airbus. If nothing else this is good for Boeing, they can throw...
Honestly I think the article title is doing a lot of work there. He’s not even accusing Boeing. Spirit makes parts for Boeing and Airbus. If nothing else this is good for Boeing, they can throw them under the bus as an excuse, and say that Airbus also uses this dastardly supplier.
Considering they supply both major airplane manufacturers, I think it’s a stretch - Airbus, at least, didn’t think. Not only, but this is like some tinfoil red string on pinboard level stuff. I...
Considering they supply both major airplane manufacturers, I think it’s a stretch - Airbus, at least, didn’t think.
Not only, but this is like some tinfoil red string on pinboard level stuff. I doubt random Boeing whistleblowers are thinking this. This would be a poor threat.
Not sure the snark is appropriate but yeah. The idea that they somehow infected someone with a disease with the goal of it developing into mrsa and killing them is just beyond belief on so many...
Not sure the snark is appropriate but yeah. The idea that they somehow infected someone with a disease with the goal of it developing into mrsa and killing them is just beyond belief on so many levels.
Because we're talking about a company with a market cap of 500m, not a state actor? I think it goes way past Occam's razor to assume that Spirit Aerosystems had available to them a novel bioweapon...
Because we're talking about a company with a market cap of 500m, not a state actor? I think it goes way past Occam's razor to assume that Spirit Aerosystems had available to them a novel bioweapon that emerges as uber-pneumonia - detected by all medical tests, including inspecting lung fluid as pneumonia but with a much higher death rate - and decided to unveil it to the world by offing this random dude.
The concern is that Boeing, the organization he accused of wrongdoing, may be involved, not Spirit.
No, we're not. We're talking about Spirit AeroSystems. One is a shitty low buck airline, the other is a $4B builder of airplanes that the whistleblower worked for.
Because we're talking about a company with a market cap of 500m, not a state actor?
No, we're not. We're talking about Spirit AeroSystems.
One is a shitty low buck airline, the other is a $4B builder of airplanes that the whistleblower worked for.
Why would you break several laws and risk jailtime for you and all of your associates, not to mention the destruction of the company, to give someone an extended ICU stay?
Why would you break several laws and risk jailtime for you and all of your associates, not to mention the destruction of the company, to give someone an extended ICU stay?
How? The whistleblower will just continue to testify once they recover? And everyone else will just think they got pneumonia, which a lot of people get every year?
How? The whistleblower will just continue to testify once they recover? And everyone else will just think they got pneumonia, which a lot of people get every year?
The question was why “they wouldn’t give a milder bioweapon”. That’s why, what would even be the point if you weren’t guaranteed a death. Yes. A) this person wasn’t a Boeing whistleblower B) I’d...
The question was why “they wouldn’t give a milder bioweapon”. That’s why, what would even be the point if you weren’t guaranteed a death.
Can you seriously say that the other Boeing whistleblowers are not spooked by this?
Yes. A) this person wasn’t a Boeing whistleblower B) I’d imagine they think he caught pneumonia and died, which over 10,000 people do every year.
At a certain point, it's worth asking what conclusion Occam's razor will take you to. I find it strange that people are accustomed to the idea of governments and crime syndicates putting hits on...
At a certain point, it's worth asking what conclusion Occam's razor will take you to. I find it strange that people are accustomed to the idea of governments and crime syndicates putting hits on people, but are unwilling to consider a corporation, highly entangled with the military-industrial complex, doing the same.
I will 100% believe a corporation, based in the US, will harass a US citizen in a ton of unethical, and outright illegal ways. There is plenty of evidence of it. I will 100% believe a corporation,...
I will 100% believe a corporation, based in the US, will harass a US citizen in a ton of unethical, and outright illegal ways. There is plenty of evidence of it.
I will 100% believe a corporation, based in the US, will pay death squads and paramilitaries in other countries with those kinds of problems to kill people who are causing them issues. There is plenty of evidence for this.
I do not easily believe that a US based corporation is putting a hit out on US citizens THAT IS ALSO DISGUISED as natural causes. Doubly so when all the damage these whistleblowers have done, is ALREADY OVER. It's not like they came out 2 days ago and suddenly died. Their claims have been going on for years (and mostly been ignored).
Why not just have them killed in a much more reliable way even if it's obvious? Everyone would come to the same conclusion if these people were mugged and shot (just like they did with the clintons, which also has a conspiracy theorists claiming their whistleblower suicides are hits) so why secret hanging and highly uncontrollable, unreliable, infection vector?
The only answer I can think of to that is that Boeing is not only corrupt, but also trying to hide how corrupt they are from the authorities, and that also makes damn little sense? "Yes order a hit on the whistle blower from 4 years ago, but also make sure the local police don't find out it was murder, disguise it!"
If you have the ability to secretly murder a US citizen as a massive corporation, you probably have much much easier means of making their life miserable or making them go away? Why not just threaten a judge at that point and make the case go away? Why not just tie them up in an endless legal battle that they don't have the resources to pursue? Why not just black ball them from the industry ruining their career? And so on and so on with much more common and absolutely proven cases.
So right now Occam's razor leads to "this makes 0 logical sense for boeing to do, and there's not a single known case of intentional MRSA infection that i'm aware of" so it's probably just that the horrible stresses of whistleblowing mixed with some random chance.
Just because it's unlikely to roll a 6 5x in a row doesn't mean it can't happen, in fact it's just as likely as rolling any other outcome 5x in a row.
This is the second whistle blower to die.
The Seattle Times' article reports in more depth:
So obviously I have no reason to think he was intentionally infected with something, but man, the conspiracy cat is definitely out of the bag now.
My best explanation that's NOT a conspiracy theory is that there are SO MANY whistleblowers for Boeing that natural causes is going to take out a lot of them before the trials are done.
There are 32 whistleblowers. I would say two deaths is quite unusual.
It's unusual, but not outside the realm of possibility. Coincidentally, both of these guys were 62 years old. For simplicity though, let's assume that makes them representative -- I kind of expect that the sort of senior engineers that would be filing these complaints are heading towards retirement and are of the old guard's safety focused cohort anyway. According to the SSA's actuarial tables the chance of a random 62 year old dying in any given year is 0.015702. If there are in fact 32 of them, the chance of at least one of them dying is ~39.7%, and the chance of at least two of them dying is still 9.0%.https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=P%5BX%3E%3D1%5D+for+X%7EB%2832%2C0.015702%29
https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=P%5BX%3E%3D2%5D+for+X%7EB%2832%2C0.015702%29
edit: I misread their ages! If we pick age 54 (the average of their two ages), and an annual death rate of 0.008394 it works out to 23.6% chance of one or more dying, or 3.0% chance of two or more dying.
Also we shouldn't ignore the influence of stress. Whistleblowers who have spent years fighting a huge company like Boeing, defending their reputation against slander, etc. have been living in a high-stress condition for years. Plus years before of watching the company's criminal behavior, stressing and debating whether you should risk your whole career and come forward. That kind of high-stress life can certainly have an impact on health.
I would point out a big problem with your math though. Your math assumes that all of them are 62 years old, or at least an average of 62. It's quite possible these two guys are substantially older than the average whistleblower age. I would expect the average age to be something more like 40-45, considering the age of the workforce.
Former Boeing employee here. In addition to the stress others have mentioned, I would also point out that there were quite a few divisions that tended to reward/promote unhealthy attachments to work. I saw far too many coworkers choosing to work long hours, skip lunch and breaks, etc for some imaginary moving-target goals. This is just speculation, but I would not be surprised if lot of the whistleblowers are seeing diminished health as a side effect of years of unhealthy work habits.
The whistleblowers are also under immense stress, so the risk of stroke or suicide is much higher, especially in their demographic.
But somehow I'm happy enough with the growing public distrust of filthy companies.
John Barnett was 62, but Joshua Dean was 45.
You may want to update your comment because you took the wrong age from the article.
Right you are, I updated it.
What is the conspiracy? That Spirit Airlines bribed his immune system?
Do white blood cells take money orders or do they prefer crypto now?
Don't know why you're getting sassy with me, the first half of my comment is very clear in saying I believe he died of natural causes.
I'm not taking this seriously, but Coca-Cola death squads are a joke/reality.
I would not be surprised that like poison-laced (polonium?) tea used in assassination attempts, there might be some drugs where it might be plausible that it impairs the victim's respiratory function, leading to any manner of medical issues, and eventually causing their death.
Sure, but this is Spirit Airlines, which was/is tettering on bankruptcy and looking towards a merger with JetBlue to survive, assassinating someone in the United States.
The thing about Polonium is that it kills you really quickly. The person in question here was in medical care for weeks - it’s unlikely that “some other drug which causes pneumonia-like symptoms” would be uncaught. Pneumonia is a very well known ailment, they’d do a sputum test to diagnose so there’s no way it wasn’t actually pneumonia, and you definitely wouldn’t choose a route that would so easily get you caught if you were to poison someone.
Pneumonia can be caused by quite a few different pathogens, though -- it just refers to an infection of the air sacs in the lungs -- so I presume proper conspiracy theories would assume some sort of biological agent rather than a drug. Yes, it's more likely he just caught something in the wild, but it's not medically implausible the way some sort of poisoning would be.
You're not wrong, but we know what the usual causes of pneumonia are. If he had a novel strain of something, that would actually cause an uproar in the medical space - just like Coronavirus, after all. Especially since he died of it, there'd no doubt be serious research into what he had, how contagious it is, etc.
Since there was none, I assume that it was a pretty routine pneumonia infection.
Oh yeah I agree there, but it's understandably pretty damn suspicious timing so I'm not surprised people are theorizing about foul play.
Honestly I think the article title is doing a lot of work there. He’s not even accusing Boeing. Spirit makes parts for Boeing and Airbus. If nothing else this is good for Boeing, they can throw them under the bus as an excuse, and say that Airbus also uses this dastardly supplier.
Considering they supply both major airplane manufacturers, I think it’s a stretch - Airbus, at least, didn’t think.
Not only, but this is like some tinfoil red string on pinboard level stuff. I doubt random Boeing whistleblowers are thinking this. This would be a poor threat.
Spirit AeroSystems is not Spirit Airlines, and the (ridiculous) claim is that Boeing did it, not Spirit.
Not sure the snark is appropriate but yeah. The idea that they somehow infected someone with a disease with the goal of it developing into mrsa and killing them is just beyond belief on so many levels.
Because we're talking about a company with a market cap of 500m, not a state actor? I think it goes way past Occam's razor to assume that Spirit Aerosystems had available to them a novel bioweapon that emerges as uber-pneumonia - detected by all medical tests, including inspecting lung fluid as pneumonia but with a much higher death rate - and decided to unveil it to the world by offing this random dude.
He didn't accuse Boeing. He accused Spirit.
No, we're not. We're talking about Spirit AeroSystems.
One is a shitty low buck airline, the other is a $4B builder of airplanes that the whistleblower worked for.
Sure, a $4b company. That does not particularly increase their availability to novel bioweapons.
Why would you break several laws and risk jailtime for you and all of your associates, not to mention the destruction of the company, to give someone an extended ICU stay?
How? The whistleblower will just continue to testify once they recover? And everyone else will just think they got pneumonia, which a lot of people get every year?
The question was why “they wouldn’t give a milder bioweapon”. That’s why, what would even be the point if you weren’t guaranteed a death.
Yes. A) this person wasn’t a Boeing whistleblower B) I’d imagine they think he caught pneumonia and died, which over 10,000 people do every year.
At a certain point, it's worth asking what conclusion Occam's razor will take you to. I find it strange that people are accustomed to the idea of governments and crime syndicates putting hits on people, but are unwilling to consider a corporation, highly entangled with the military-industrial complex, doing the same.
I will 100% believe a corporation, based in the US, will harass a US citizen in a ton of unethical, and outright illegal ways. There is plenty of evidence of it.
I will 100% believe a corporation, based in the US, will pay death squads and paramilitaries in other countries with those kinds of problems to kill people who are causing them issues. There is plenty of evidence for this.
I do not easily believe that a US based corporation is putting a hit out on US citizens THAT IS ALSO DISGUISED as natural causes. Doubly so when all the damage these whistleblowers have done, is ALREADY OVER. It's not like they came out 2 days ago and suddenly died. Their claims have been going on for years (and mostly been ignored).
Why not just have them killed in a much more reliable way even if it's obvious? Everyone would come to the same conclusion if these people were mugged and shot (just like they did with the clintons, which also has a conspiracy theorists claiming their whistleblower suicides are hits) so why secret hanging and highly uncontrollable, unreliable, infection vector?
The only answer I can think of to that is that Boeing is not only corrupt, but also trying to hide how corrupt they are from the authorities, and that also makes damn little sense? "Yes order a hit on the whistle blower from 4 years ago, but also make sure the local police don't find out it was murder, disguise it!"
If you have the ability to secretly murder a US citizen as a massive corporation, you probably have much much easier means of making their life miserable or making them go away? Why not just threaten a judge at that point and make the case go away? Why not just tie them up in an endless legal battle that they don't have the resources to pursue? Why not just black ball them from the industry ruining their career? And so on and so on with much more common and absolutely proven cases.
So right now Occam's razor leads to "this makes 0 logical sense for boeing to do, and there's not a single known case of intentional MRSA infection that i'm aware of" so it's probably just that the horrible stresses of whistleblowing mixed with some random chance.
Just because it's unlikely to roll a 6 5x in a row doesn't mean it can't happen, in fact it's just as likely as rolling any other outcome 5x in a row.
What hit do you suppose they put out? They sent him to the hospital so that he could catch MRSA as a commentary on how dangerous hospitals can be?
A second whistle blower, also died.