Doctor fired and criminally charged for not throwing usable vaccines out
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This is absolutely outrageous:
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.
In addition to the absolutely idiotic premise that “equity” requires literally throwing vaccines away rather than administering them to anyone but the very highest priority recipients, there seemed to be a healthy dose of racism involved:
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.
Fortunately, at least a judge told the DA to eat shit:
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.”
Still, he’s out of a job, which is absolutely indefensible. But when far too many Americans think it’s better — even in a pandemic when speed is hugely important — for vaccines to be thrown out rather than someone getting a shot when it isn’t “their turn” it’s the kind of thing that will happen.