Stanford Health Care Vaccine Prioritization Algorithm Explained

On December 17, 2020, Stanford rolled out the COVID-19 vaccinations for Stanford Medicine and decided via an human programmed “algorithm” that only 7 of the 5,000 vaccines provided would be given to front line medical staff and health workers. Not only that but the human designed algorithm coincidentally decided to give the highest ranking doctors at Stanford the vaccine before any of the nurses or doctors that are actually coming in contact with COVID-19. Niraj Sehgal was at the head of this operation and claimed the day before that they were trying to fix the issue and redirect the vaccines to those who needed it, in a pathetic attempt to quell the angry residents he was victimizing. It didn’t work, and when the truth came out that he did nothing to fix the problem and sent a man named Timothy to try and tell the residents it was a computer error, which is a lie. A computer can only do what it’s told, and it did exactly that, giving prioritized vaccinations to the Stanford favorites and leaving those who need it out in the dust.

Frontline workers at Stanford Medical Center say they aren’t being prioritized in Covid-19 vaccination allocation. The administration has came out and said it’s because of an “Algorithm.”

What is the Stanford Health Care Vaccination Algorithm?

The administration at Stanford did indeed setup an algorithm which just means a set of rules to determine who will be vaccinated first. They used a point system to determine who will be vaccinated first. We wrote a pseudocode.

/* Everyone starts at 0 points, the more points you have, you are prioritized to be vaccinated */

If you're a frontline worker, add 5 points

Add "<frontline worker's age> / 10" points
/* ex : if you're 55 years old, 5.5 points added */

If you're part of the top executives at Stanford Health Care, you get 100 points added.  As you go down the executive ladder, deduct 1 point from the 100 points.

Sort and output by whoever has most points descending order

The actual code is a little bit more complex in that, you get points for your health condition and there’s probably some breakdown in how many points you get depending where you are in the administration ladder.

Output of Stanford Health Care Vaccination Algorithm

David Entwistle
Quinn McKenna
Linda Hoff
Niraj Sehgal
Dale Beautty
Aditya Bhasin
Jill Buathier
...

What is Stanford Health Care’s response to the vaccination debacle?

Immediately after it leaked that administrations (that were working from home) got the vaccination first, they sent a person to calm everyone down. Instead they insulted everyone’s intelligence by pointing fingers at an algorithm as if some AI chose who’s important

As the story made headlines, Stanford Health Care responded on twitter.

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