Joshua Dean, one of the first whistleblowers to allege Spirit AeroSystems execs had ignored manufacturing defects on the 737 MAX, died after a sudden illness.

Joshua Dean, a former quality auditor at Boeing supplier Spirit AeroSystems and one of the first whistleblowers to allege Spirit leadership had ignored manufacturing defects on the 737 MAX, died Tuesday morning after a struggle with a sudden, fast-spreading infection.

Known as Josh, Dean lived in Wichita, Kan., where Spirit is based. He was 45, had been in good health and was noted for having a healthy lifestyle.

He died after two weeks in critical condition, his aunt Carol Parsons said.

  • NaibofTabr@infosec.pubEnglish
    622·
    8 months ago

    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.

    Hmm, there’s nothing more specific on the “having trouble breathing”… possibly suspicious, but also possibly an allergic reaction… for all we know he was stung by a bee or something.

    MRSA is unfortunately not suspicious at all, it is far too commonly acquired in hospitals.

    MRSA is also a leading cause of hospital-acquired and ventilator-associated pneumonia. Hospital-acquired pneumonia (HAP), or nosocomial pneumonia, is characterized as pneumonia developing 48 hours or more after hospital admission, indicating that it was not incubating at the time of admission. Ventilator-associated pneumonia (VAP) is defined as pneumonia developing 48 hours or more after implementation of endotracheal intubation and mechanical ventilation and was not present before intubation. The microbiological etiology of these two conditions is similar and carries grave prognosis associated with poor overall outcomes.

    National Library of Medicine: MRSA

    In the larger context of the Boeing incidents, this death seems suspicious. But the circumstances of this death aren’t very suspicious otherwise, this could easily have been a minor issue that became fatal due to a hospital-acquired staph infection. It’s probably a bad idea to jump to conclusions.

    • huginn@feddit.it
      151·
      8 months ago

      Hmm, there’s nothing more specific on the “having trouble breathing”

      Because it was almost certainly COVID but they didn’t test for it, or didn’t release it as a cause of death.

      • NaibofTabr@infosec.pubEnglish
        4·
        8 months ago

        Yeah, I wasn’t going to bring up COVID because I can only handle so many conspiracy nuts at a time, but this does seem like a possibility. There doesn’t seem to be recent data.

        The pneumonia and infection could have made COVID testing impossible or just low priority compared to the life-threatening issues, so we probably won’t get a definite answer on that.

    • ZeroTemp@lemmy.world
      101·
      8 months ago

      Unfortunately getting pneumonia and it going septic is not an uncommon occurrence. Once you are septic if you don’t get the right antibiotics in you quickly you’ll go into septic shock which has a 40% mortality rate.

    • werefreeatlast@lemmy.world
      62·
      8 months ago

      The only conspiracy theory I can bring to the table is that MRSA is probably easy to weaponize. A nurse or visitor could have easily deployed a dirty tactic such as just visiting a patient with MRSA at another hospital and then coming to this hospital to visit the victim. Just touching infected areas of one patient and then touching vulnerable areas on the victim is enough.

      This is why you don’t want to end up in a hospice where there’s a history of MRSA. You will eventually get it.