The Vaccine Had to Be Used. He Used It. He Was Fired.

[demmiblue]

Ten doses of the Covid-19 vaccine would expire within hours, so a Houston doctor gave it to people with medical conditions, including his wife. What followed was “the lowest moment in my life,” Dr. Hasan Gokal said.

The Texas doctor had six hours. Now that a vial of Covid-19 vaccine had been opened on this late December night, he had to find 10 eligible people for its remaining doses before the precious medicine expired. In six hours.

Scrambling, the doctor made house calls and directed people to his home outside Houston. Some were acquaintances; others, strangers. A bed-bound nonagenarian. A woman in her 80s with dementia. A mother with a child who uses a ventilator.

After midnight, and with just minutes before the vaccine became unusable, the doctor, Hasan Gokal, gave the last dose to his wife, who has a pulmonary disease that leaves her short of breath.

For his actions, Dr. Gokal was fired from his government job and then charged with stealing 10 vaccine doses worth a total of $135 — a shun-worthy misdemeanor that sent his name and mug shot rocketing around the globe.

“It was my world coming down,” Dr. Gokal said in a telephone interview on Friday. “To have everything collapse on you. God, it was the lowest moment in my life.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/10/us/houston-doctor-fired-covid-vaccine.html

[Tom Rinaldo]

1. This man deserved a commendation, not condemnation n/t

[Jirel]

2. I hope he has lawyered up.

He should be commended for not wasting vaccine doses. He is a very real hero to the people whose lives he may have saved, and a community that is a little safer. It’s obscene for vax to be wasted when so many need and want it.

[kirkuchiyo]

3. Yes but with a that name I doubt he is white

Which is grounds alone for conviction of any crime in Tex-ass

[still_one]

4. You read the storage requirements from Pfizer, and after it has been thawed and

reconstituted, you have a very small window to use it before it needs to be discarded

[bullwinkle428]

5. Jesus, I am utterly furious after reading this story. Goddamn county prosecutor

trying to make a name for himself by going after an immigrant doctor, whose actions were the literal definition of the Hippocratic oath.

[forgotmylogin]

6. It's like a reverse-Trolley Problem

Do you act and potentially help people, or help nobody through inaction.

[Celerity]

7. one would think that the DA, as a Democrat, would have had more common sense

https://ballotpedia.org/Kim_Ogg

Days later, a criminal court judge, Franklin Bynum, dismissed the case for lack of probable cause.

“In the number of words usually taken to describe an allegation of retail shoplifting, the State attempts, for the first time, to criminalize a doctor’s documented administration of vaccine doses during a public health emergency,” he wrote. “The Court emphatically rejects this attempted imposition of the criminal law on the professional decisions of a physician.”

Both the Texas Medical Association and the Harris County Medical Society recently issued a statement of support for physicians like Dr. Gokal who find themselves scrambling “to avoid wasting the vaccine in a punctured vial.”

“It is difficult to understand any justification for charging any well-intentioned physician in this situation with a criminal offense,” the statement said.

[demmiblue]

9. Adding insult to injury.

The whole thing is absolutely mind-boggling.

[DFW]

8. I would hope that the over-zealous DA either......

Apologizes, or.....
loses the next primary for DA

[Dr. Strange]

10. Hmmm...Equity eh?

The officials maintained that he had violated protocol and should have returned the remaining doses to the office or thrown them away, the doctor recalled. He also said that one of the officials startled him by questioning the lack of “equity” among those he had vaccinated.

“Are you suggesting that there were too many Indian names in that group?” Dr. Gokal said he asked.

Exactly, he said he was told.

[crickets]

12. Wow. nt

[peggysue2]

11. This makes no sense

I've read a number of articles where medical personnel have distributed the vaccine bc the vials were nearing the end of their efficacy. In fact, just last week a group gave shots to drivers stuck in a snow storm. They were hailed as heroes.

Maybe the fact that this doctor gave his wife one of the shots turned the story negative. But she certainly sounds like a worthy candidate, someone with pulmonary issues.

My husband and I are now on a wait list for the vaccine. We're both eager to receive the inoculation and return to a semblance of normalcy. But I would want the vaccine used on others under these circumstances rather than thrown away. The more vaccine in arms, the safer we all are.

Dumb!