The Land of Pharma – Marble Floors

When we last approached this topic, we spoke about the vagaries of a vaccine building. Let me go into a bit more detail here.
One has strong memories of "How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying," "The Peter Principle," or some other take on Big Business and, I will admit, comedy is always based on fact. But situational or observational humor is found just about everywhere. The inconsistencies we live by every day fill volumes. I laugh my fool head off every time I go to my home state and see beer sold in gas stations or, now rather rare, in a drive through convenience store. Those easily-recognized oddities are simple to turn into hot-button issues or "wedge debate" or whatever and do absolutely no good in our attempts to make this world a better place. Understanding this next bit might help get us all to a more proactive stance where we might make good arguments and make better policy.
If I parked my car in my living room, it wouldn't be long until my car had fallen into my basement. If I drove my car down the road, but first removed the rubber tires leaving only the metal rims, I would put neat lines right down the blacktop. Then I'd go to jail.
In any event, in the vaccine industry, it is very common to have an 800 liter stainless steel tank balanced on four stainless steel casters and push that down a hallway.
Quickly, in very clean industries like vaccines, we use stainless steel very often because it is, indeed, stainless. It cleans well and doesn't discolor. Discoloration is, after all, a chemical reaction to the metal, which could "leach" metals or other compounds into our medicine. That isn't at all good.
So, an 800L stainless steel tank full of vaccine fluid weighs the same as a small car. If that was in my living room, it would fall into my basement. Once there, it would certainly crack my foundation, bankrupt me, and force me to live on the streets of Santa Monica. If I put it in the road and tried to push it, it would destroy the very same blacktop we trust to hold our rubber-tired cars in place when we speed off from the bar.
Don't drink and drive.
But that's not all. Those incredibly heavy tanks full of fluid must be weighed! Enter the tricky world of floor scales. Now, we obviously can't push such a heavy tank up an incline as we don't want to risk tipping it over and killing someone. So the scale itself must be buried in the floor. This is commonly known as a pit scale. For those that have ever had to weigh a vehicle when dumping garbage (or if you're a truck driver), it's a lot like those scales. There is one huge difference, though. These scales are accurate to a tenth of a kilogram. If the tank really truly weighs 1994 kilograms, then the scale could give a number between 1993.9 and 1994.1. I hope you see how stupid accurate that is.
These scales weigh a heck of a lot themselves. Now, you have the tank and a heavy stainless steel scale all on one little piece of real estate.
But that's still not all! These scales must be calibrated. So somewhere in your facility you have over 2000 kilograms of calibration weights just sitting around to be used once or twice a day to ensure the scale still works. Those weights don't hover in mid air! That is still more weight sitting on the floors. Marble, the most beautiful floor ever put on this earth, would shatter in a second.
What's the point? Well, here it is: there is more thought, planning, execution work hours, and money in the floor of one vaccine facility floor than there is in the entirety of any house, save maybe Bill Gates' super mansion. If that's only the floor, what else does the cost of the vaccines we take pay for?
Well, until next time…