What’s a doc to do?
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 this effort not to squander this vial of vaccine, was Dr. Gokal given a medal? Nope. Guess again.
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.
As it happened, some of the people to whom he gave vaccine injections were at risk, including his wife. But if they weren’t, would he have been a criminal for injecting them anyway, or was the only “right” solution to let the remaining vaccine expire if he couldn’t find the “correct” eligible people?
Late last month, a judge dismissed the charge as groundless, after which the local district attorney vowed to present the matter to a grand jury. And while prosecutors portray the doctor as a cold opportunist, his lawyer says he acted responsibly — even heroically.
As people fight about who should be at the front of the vaccine line, whether it should be based on age, occupation, race or proximity to power, the idea that we can regulate reality from afar is good enough reason to not merely ruin Dr. Gokal’s career, but put him in jail.
On Dec. 22, Dr. Gokal joined a conference call in which state health officials explained the protocols for administering the recently approved Moderna vaccine. The 10 or 11 doses in a vial are viable for six hours after the seal is punctured.
There was an eligibility list, because grocery clerks love lists. It makes their world orderly and assures that the right people will be treated right, as if there are unright people to be neglected.
After that, he said, the message was: “Just put it in people’s arms. We don’t want any doses to go to waste. Period.”
This would seem exceptionally pragmatic, even if it didn’t end in the word “period,” which makes it inviolate.
Around 6:45 at night, as the event wound down, an eligible person arrived for a shot. A nurse punctured a new vial to administer the vaccine, which activated the six-hour time limit for the 10 remaining doses.
The chances of 10 eligible people suddenly showing up were slim; by now, workers were offsetting the darkness with car headlights. But Dr. Gokal said he was determined not to waste a single dose.
Isn’t that what one would expect a vaccine-injecting criminal to say? Dr. Gokal then searched for people to inject, which turned out to be surprisingly more difficult than grocery clerks would imagine. He found some and injected them, then searched some more. Then some more, until there was only one dose left and only one person available to be injected.
Tired and frustrated, Dr. Gokal said that he turned to his wife, whose pulmonary sarcoidosis made her eligible for the vaccine. “I didn’t intend to give this to you, but in a half-hour I’m going to have to dump this down the toilet,” he recalled telling her. “It’s as simple as that.”
He said his hesitant wife asked whether it was the right thing to do. “It makes perfect sense,” he said he answered. “We don’t want any doses wasted, period.”
With 15 minutes to spare, Dr. Gokal gave his wife the last Moderna dose.
The next morning, he filed his report, because grocery clerks require reports.
Several days later, the doctor said, that supervisor and the human resources director summoned him to ask whether he had administered 10 doses outside of the scheduled event on Dec. 29. He said he had, in keeping with guidelines not to waste the vaccine — and was promptly fired.
In the minds of regulators, it would have been better to return the unused vaccine to be thrown away rather than injected into people’s arms. Well, maybe not “people,” but the unright people.
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.
And Harris County District Attorney, Kim Ogg, knows the right people from the unright.
It alleged that Dr. Gokal “stole the vial” and disregarded county protocols to ensure that vaccines are not wasted and are administered to eligible people on a waiting list. “He abused his position to place his friends and family in line in front of people who had gone through the lawful process to be there,” Ms. Ogg said.
After the vaccine event was over, with no one else there and little hope of anyone else showing up, what was Dr. Gokal to do? He could reach out to whomever he saw, whomever he knew, whomever he could reach in the evening into the night, or he could let the vaccine expire and save no one? He made his choice. The bureaucracy made its choice.
Days later, a criminal court judge, Franklin Bynum, dismissed the case for lack of probable cause.
Judge Bynum, the only Democratic Socialist judge I’ve ever endorsed, did the only rational thing he could do. Judges don’t get to hand out medals to docs who prefer to help people rather than appease grocery clerks with checklists.
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