No good deed shall go unpunished.
So it was with Dr. Hasan Gokal (photo, left), supervisor of a Houston vaccination site, who rounded up 10 people and gave them shots instead of throwing away vaccine from opened and partly used vials.
He even got permission first from a superior at the public health department.
They fired him, and even tried to charge him with theft. The grand jury wanted nothing to do with it.
“Gokal vaccinated several eligible individuals,” CNN reported (here), “including his wife, who had an underlying medical condition, after another person … suddenly said he was unavailable.” (More details here.)
And, get this, “Gokal was told by HCPH Human Resources that he ‘did not “equitably” distribute the vaccine.” (HCPH is Harris County Public Health.) Why? Because he gave it “to too many individuals with Indian-sounding names.” (Note, Gokal’s ethnic origin is Pakistani, not Indian; and if you know anything at all about South Asia, you know that Pakistan and India are enemies, so it’s hard to argue he was playing favorites with his native countrymen.)
But that’s not all. “HCPH also told Gokal he should have instead thrown the vaccines away,” his lawsuit alleges. His attorney contends, “It’s very clear that if he had vaccinated people named Anderson, Smith and Jones he would have been called a hero and not have been fired, charged, vilified and brought before a grand jury that thankfully refused to indict him.” Yup, couldn’t find enough white people in the few hours he had to use the vaccine or lose it. The stuff has a shelf life of 6 hours.
CNN reached out to HCPH, who told them “they are not commenting on the lawsuit.” Which is standard when you’re being sued. But I will. They fired the wrong guy. The bonehead bureaucrats responsible for this fiasco should hit the bricks, and the public would be well-served by their departure. This is the kind of stuff that spawns cynical jokes about bureaucracies.
Oh, and the million bucks he’s suing them for? They should just shut up and pay it. They’re guilty. And the taxpayers should take it out of their pension funds, but that’ll never happen. It’s always the innocent public that gets stuck holding the bag for bureaucratic stupidity.
By the way, I know exactly how this happened: What he did wasn’t authorized by the manual. I’m not saying regulations and procedures aren’t necessary. They are, but rules can’t cover every situation, and there needs to be some flexibility in the system. Remember the old adage about there being exceptions to every rule? And God gave people brains so they could think critically and exercise sound judgment. Where were the brains in HR? Are you really going to argue that nobody in HCPH had authority to review this and say “this is stupid?” I don’t believe that for one minute.
What I do believe is that his attorney is right that this would have been handled differently if Anderson, Smith, and Jones got those doses. What is believable is that people with racist tendencies were in the decision loop. That’s not me making off-handed assumptions; it’s an insinuation that comes from Gokal’s attorney, who’s intimately familiar with the facts of the case.
The locus of the alleged racism was HCPH. The D.A., who happens to be a Democrat, made no statement but merely sent CNN a copy of the charging documents, which cited the HCPH director, who cited — you guessed it — the procedures manual. Still, prosecutors are supposed to review cases, and can decline to prosecute, so the D.A.’s office isn’t innocent either and their response to the media inquiry is bare-faced buck-passing. Somebody in that office should be hung out to dry, too.
Dr. Gokal goes to Washington?
Stranger things have happened.