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Let’s Stop Punishing Doctors for Vaccinating People
A doctor in Texas is the latest to be charged for skipping the line to give out expiring vaccine doses
After a very rocky rollout, the effort to vaccinate Americans against the coronavirus has steadily picked up pace, and relative to other countries, the U.S. has so far done a surprisingly good job of distributing and administering vaccines. But it’s still going to be months before most — let alone all — Americans have been vaccinated, which is one of the many things that makes what recently happened to a Texas doctor named Hasan Gokal utterly enraging. Gokal was until recently the medical director for the Covid-response team for Harris County (which is where Houston is). That is, he had that job until he got fired, and then charged with theft by the Harris County DA’s office. His crime? Not letting vaccines go to waste.
There are two basic principles that are (or should be) governing the vaccine rollout. First, we want to prioritize vaccinating people who are at highest risk from Covid, and those who care for them. In the U.S., that has generally meant vaccinating health care and other emergency workers, nursing home residents and staff, and older Americans. Second, we ideally want everyone to be vaccinated (even though some people will refuse to be) because…
