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Infectious disease, also it could have been a macabre threat of some sort.
In any case, you assume the worst and evacuate because if you assume it’s “just a stunt” and it’s not people die.
I agree it’s probably just a stunt, but until you know that, you don’t know that.
I've worked in hospitals, and once we had a vacuum tube container (basically the kind that banks use for drive up banking) bust open in the middle of the line. They determined the blood was biohazard and considered to be infected with something nasty. We worked around it but one of my coworkers had to deal with a PC that got blood dripped in/on it.
We used PPE and put all the things in biohazard bags and sent it to surplus.
We evacuated the rooms that were affected but business continued everywhere else.
Blood in vials might be concerning but evacuation of a whole building for it is ridiculous.
In short.... this was a suspicious package, and it's patently ridiculous to not treat it as a suspicious package.
work place accidents have different responses than (potential) terrorism. and hospitals have different responses than office buildings.
You're working in the context of a hospital. You have (presumably) the necessary PPE and training to work around infectious agents and be safe. None of that's going to be true in a generic office building. You're going to be lucky if the cleaners have a box of gloves and there's an expired, unchecked and pilfered OSHA cabinet with some bandages, gloves, a stupid CPR mask and a shit load of Tylenol and bandaids.
Hospitals have to weigh the risk and difficulty of moving patients, as well the risk of whatever potential attack is there. A generic office building is exceedingly unlikely to have patients that can't be moved, or shouldn't be moved, and it's extremely unlikely that someone will die because they're asked to wait outside as it would be with a hospital (in say, somebody coming from car accident.)
For office buildings, it's simpler and safer to just dump the building than it is to have a more nuanced approach in large part because morons'll get in the way of a proper search for other materials, effectively prolonging the amount of time it takes, and if there are other materials, everybody whose still in the building is at risk until the suspect material is found and disposed of.
I just don't see how closed vials could threaten the lives of anyone, much less an entire building. It's not a loose powder or something. It probably was a threat, but those are common these days. They wouldn't evacuate if it was a letter with some generic "gonna kill you" threat written on it.
When I say stunt, I mean the evacuation was a stunt. Threats are a dime a dozen, if they evacuated for every one they wouldn't get much done.
actually, most protocols say you do.
Because that one time it is a real threat, people die if you don't.
Again, it's not just the closed vials. it's possibly whatever is under them. It's possibly what else was left in the building. You might not dump for a threatening letter sent, but you would dump for a letter that was on top of a heavy box. It's a suspicious package. you treat it like a suspicious package until you know it's not.
They must not pay much attention to most protocols, because I seem to remember lots of threats flying around the past couple years with no mention of big evacuations.