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For reference for non-Houston readers, he took the vaccine from a vaccine event in Humble to his home in Sugar Land. That's over 40 miles through the fourth la

by kxyvr 6y ago

For reference for non-Houston readers, he took the vaccine from a vaccine event in Humble to his home in Sugar Land. That's over 40 miles through the fourth largest city in America. His route home would have had him drive by the Texas Medical Center, which contains 21 hospitals that employs over 100k people. Further, the city/county run vaccine effort has been very strict about verifying addresses. He took the vaccine across county lines. As much as I strongly believe that rigid rules hurt good people, I believe it's a false dichotomy to assert that either he takes the vaccine home or it goes to waste. Further, it is important to maintain some semblance of public trust during this process and the optics of driving across one of the largest cities in America, by one of the largest medical centers in the country, and taking the vaccine home to find eligible people is not good. Now, yes, it's not quite as easy as calling up a hospital as asking if they could use it, but it doesn't sound like he tried. Now, even if we believe he did the right thing, I'll still stress that there will always be a contention between optics, trust, and corruption. Say I work as the mayor of a city and my brother really is the best contractor for the job, do I hire him? I'll contend that's not exactly an easy question and neither is the case with this physician and the vaccine.

valarauko 6y ago
I agree that the NYT article presents a false dichotomy, and offers a rosy picture of the doctor's actions. That said, I genuinely wonder what's the alternative action available to him? I agree that the article creates a false ticking time bomb narrative and he's Jack Bauer. Still, he made good faith (presumably) attempts to eligible people at the vaccination site, who refused. Would the Texas Medical Center have accepted an opened half used vial from some guy who drove up? If the only people who might accept it were people he personally knew and his patients, I'm not sure what he could do besides try Sugar Land. I agree he could have tried harder, but honestly - when his supervisors didn't care when he called them, why should he?
civilized 6y ago
> I believe it's a false dichotomy to assert that either he takes the vaccine home or it goes to waste I don't see a specific, viable, knowable-at-the-time alternative course of action Dr. Gokal could have taken, from you or anyone else. And the events in question happened over a month ago. Dr. Gokal's boss has had over a month to BS about what Dr. Gokal should have done, and failed to come up with anything. Dr. Gokal had six hours. > Say I work as the mayor of a city and my brother really is the best contractor for the job, do I hire him? I'll contend that's not exactly an easy question and neither is the case with this physician and the vaccine. I am disgusted with the laid-back, bureaucratic attitude so many people seem to have about this vaccination campaign. It is truly no surprise anymore that we have managed this pandemic so disastrously, and let so many people die needlessly. Dr. Gokal had six hours to get ten doses into vulnerable people's arms. It was night time and he had no guidance from management on how to avoid wasting those doses. Wasted doses mean dead bodies. Do you understand that? And after understanding that, can you explain to me how armchair quarterbacking Dr. Gokal is anything but unconscionable? This is not a time to gab with the angels on our shoulders about optics, about whether we look like perfect little boys and girls. It is time to actually be good. It is time to save as many lives as we can. Dr. Gokal did that, he made no attempt to hide it, and he paid a terrible price. If you're going to sit in judgment of people, it should be the horrible bureaucrats who dare to judge him, when it was THEIR failures that put him in this position.
- kxyvr 6y ago
  Well, here's one option. Between Humble and Kingwood there are about half a dozen freestanding ERs in addition to a hospital ER at one of the Hermann branches. They would have been within 5-10 minutes of the vaccine's original location. While freestanding ERs have a number of issues, there is a single attending on staff that is extremely easy to get hold of by another physician. He could have called at least one of them to see if there were eligible patients in the facility that would accept the vaccine. Yes, this takes time, but note that depending on traffic it takes about an hour to drive back to Sugar Land. I believe that if he would have dispersed the vaccines at one of those facilities, the story and perception of this physician would have been dramatically different. My point in bringing this up is that there were other realistic options that he could have taken. It is not quite as simple as take the vaccine home or it goes to waste.
  - civilized 6y ago
    Interesting post, better than most making this side of the argument. Do we know if those ERs would administer vaccines from another hospital's punctured vial in their facilities? Do we know how long it would take to get the answer to that question, trimming off the 42 minutes per person Dr. Gokal had to find, administer, and properly document the vaccine injection? And at the end of all that, would there be enough high-priority individuals on hand, ready and willing to be vaccinated? Was that clearly better than calling up people the doctor knew, and knew to be vulnerable? Yeah, I don't think you know any of that. It's fine to speculate about the hypothetical optimal course of action in this situation, but it's deeply wrong to judge Dr. Gokal without certain knowledge of all those things.
    - kxyvr 6y ago
      I very much agree that we don't have all of the information here and that it's very easy to Monday morning quarterback a decision that was made under pressure without good guidance. Sadly, it's possible that this whole situation will turn into a trap where there all available options have some kind of negative outcome. That said, I don't think that it's entirely inappropriate to discuss or postulate other courses of action because it's something that can help other people in the same situation. With respect to the freestanding ERs, I would contend that they would probably take it. A friend of mine owns a couple in Houston. My wife used to work off and on with a different company at them as the attending physician. That does not make me an expert in this area, but I can say with absolute confidence that getting hold of the physician on duty quickly with this kind of matter is guaranteed. Whether they would want the liability to give the vaccines is unknown to me. The next time I see my friend, I'll ask him because I'm genuinely curious. I'll also mention that there are certain cultural biases that come into play here as well. I spent years doing federal contract work and it was well ingrained into me that avoiding the appearance of impropriety is important for a well functioning organization. As much as the organizations that I worked with don't want waste, the bias is to side with clean, unreproachable conduct even if this is more wasteful. Not all of the government works this way and the reality of life is that this isn't always so easy. I mention this because that kind of bias suggests a different way of looking at the problem and provides a different set of solutions. That's not a value judgement to say that these solutions are better or worse, but an implicit assumption that there has to be a different way.

by kxyvr 6y ago

valarauko 6y ago

I agree that the NYT article presents a false dichotomy, and offers a rosy picture of the doctor's actions. That said, I genuinely wonder what's the alternative action available to him? I agree that the article creates a false ticking time bomb narrative and he's Jack Bauer. Still, he made good faith (presumably) attempts to eligible people at the vaccination site, who refused. Would the Texas Medical Center have accepted an opened half used vial from some guy who drove up? If the only people who might accept it were people he personally knew and his patients, I'm not sure what he could do besides try Sugar Land. I agree he could have tried harder, but honestly - when his supervisors didn't care when he called them, why should he?

civilized 6y ago

> I believe it's a false dichotomy to assert that either he takes the vaccine home or it goes to waste I don't see a specific, viable, knowable-at-the-time alternative course of action Dr. Gokal could have taken, from you or anyone else. And the events in question happened over a month ago. Dr. Gokal's boss has had over a month to BS about what Dr. Gokal should have done, and failed to come up with anything. Dr. Gokal had six hours. > Say I work as the mayor of a city and my brother really is the best contractor for the job, do I hire him? I'll contend that's not exactly an easy question and neither is the case with this physician and the vaccine. I am disgusted with the laid-back, bureaucratic attitude so many people seem to have about this vaccination campaign. It is truly no surprise anymore that we have managed this pandemic so disastrously, and let so many people die needlessly. Dr. Gokal had six hours to get ten doses into vulnerable people's arms. It was night time and he had no guidance from management on how to avoid wasting those doses. Wasted doses mean dead bodies. Do you understand that? And after understanding that, can you explain to me how armchair quarterbacking Dr. Gokal is anything but unconscionable? This is not a time to gab with the angels on our shoulders about optics, about whether we look like perfect little boys and girls. It is time to actually be good. It is time to save as many lives as we can. Dr. Gokal did that, he made no attempt to hide it, and he paid a terrible price. If you're going to sit in judgment of people, it should be the horrible bureaucrats who dare to judge him, when it was THEIR failures that put him in this position.

kxyvr 6y ago
Well, here's one option. Between Humble and Kingwood there are about half a dozen freestanding ERs in addition to a hospital ER at one of the Hermann branches. They would have been within 5-10 minutes of the vaccine's original location. While freestanding ERs have a number of issues, there is a single attending on staff that is extremely easy to get hold of by another physician. He could have called at least one of them to see if there were eligible patients in the facility that would accept the vaccine. Yes, this takes time, but note that depending on traffic it takes about an hour to drive back to Sugar Land. I believe that if he would have dispersed the vaccines at one of those facilities, the story and perception of this physician would have been dramatically different. My point in bringing this up is that there were other realistic options that he could have taken. It is not quite as simple as take the vaccine home or it goes to waste.
- civilized 6y ago
  Interesting post, better than most making this side of the argument. Do we know if those ERs would administer vaccines from another hospital's punctured vial in their facilities? Do we know how long it would take to get the answer to that question, trimming off the 42 minutes per person Dr. Gokal had to find, administer, and properly document the vaccine injection? And at the end of all that, would there be enough high-priority individuals on hand, ready and willing to be vaccinated? Was that clearly better than calling up people the doctor knew, and knew to be vulnerable? Yeah, I don't think you know any of that. It's fine to speculate about the hypothetical optimal course of action in this situation, but it's deeply wrong to judge Dr. Gokal without certain knowledge of all those things.
  - kxyvr 6y ago
    I very much agree that we don't have all of the information here and that it's very easy to Monday morning quarterback a decision that was made under pressure without good guidance. Sadly, it's possible that this whole situation will turn into a trap where there all available options have some kind of negative outcome. That said, I don't think that it's entirely inappropriate to discuss or postulate other courses of action because it's something that can help other people in the same situation. With respect to the freestanding ERs, I would contend that they would probably take it. A friend of mine owns a couple in Houston. My wife used to work off and on with a different company at them as the attending physician. That does not make me an expert in this area, but I can say with absolute confidence that getting hold of the physician on duty quickly with this kind of matter is guaranteed. Whether they would want the liability to give the vaccines is unknown to me. The next time I see my friend, I'll ask him because I'm genuinely curious. I'll also mention that there are certain cultural biases that come into play here as well. I spent years doing federal contract work and it was well ingrained into me that avoiding the appearance of impropriety is important for a well functioning organization. As much as the organizations that I worked with don't want waste, the bias is to side with clean, unreproachable conduct even if this is more wasteful. Not all of the government works this way and the reality of life is that this isn't always so easy. I mention this because that kind of bias suggests a different way of looking at the problem and provides a different set of solutions. That's not a value judgement to say that these solutions are better or worse, but an implicit assumption that there has to be a different way.