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The Vaccine Had to Be Used. He Used It. He Was Fired

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Re: The Vaccine Had to Be Used. He Used It. He Was Fired

#61

Post by colechristensen »

nathancahill wrote: post #3

Spent a long time reading about how vast bureaucratic inefficiencies are created by people worrying that "the wrong person" will benefit from government programs or that someone "undeserving" might get theirs before I do. This falls squarely in that bucket. Tragic.

I was once involved with a young woman in a homeless program which was entirely defeated by this exact "wrong person" attitude.

Get a homeless person an apartment? Great.

But it didn't end there, there was a constant stream of documentation requirements, your employer had to, monthly, sign paperwork about how much you earned (advertise to employers that you are/were homeless). The program punished you for making money and took most of your earnings away to pay for the housing. The program constantly threatened to take away your funding if the paperwork wasn't perfect. The program constantly made mistakes, paid rent late, and generally threatened a vulnerable homeless person with further homelessness.

It was infuriating to experience this through another person. In attempts to help a person, these programs were taking vulnerable people, dangling housing in front of them, and constantly threatening them with taking it away. That is of course exactly the opposite of what you need to do to someone having trouble taking care of themselves, and sadly mirrors the abusive kinds of situation which so often leads people to homelessness.

Re: The Vaccine Had to Be Used. He Used It. He Was Fired

#62

Post by StillBored »

bagacrap wrote: post #25
kuu wrote: post #18

In Spain we had many cases of politicians and public people using this excuse to get vaccinated before the rest (even bishops used it, and not only one!). I think it would be an easy to fix thing: Have a list of extra people available if you end up with an extra dose. It shouldn't be that hard, we had a year for preparing for this...

Politicians assume their position by winning a popularity contest, not a foresight-and-competency contest.

Its called leading from the rear, and that is basically what I thought when Greg Abbott (Texas gov) got his, since AFAIK he isn't in any of the identified groups.

https://abc13.com/health/gov-greg-abbott-receives-covid-19-v...

At least when Biden (referenced in the article) got his, he exceeded the age requirements in most states.

The claim that they are doing it to show people its safe is a bit cynical IMHO.

Re: The Vaccine Had to Be Used. He Used It. He Was Fired

#63

Post by CivBase »

This is dumb. Are we really willing to slow down the vaccine distribution because we're afraid some trivial amount might not be distributed in the correct order?

The question should not be "why did he give the doses to people he knows?", it should be "why were there even doses available for him to do this with?". Someone failed to make sure every available dose of a highly demanded vaccine had a patient. That is the real problem and it likely has nothing to do with this doctor.

It's a shame the article doesn't name the hospital he worked for because it looks like they're using him as a scapegoat for their own failings.

Re: The Vaccine Had to Be Used. He Used It. He Was Fired

#64

Post by TeaDrunk »

asmos7 wrote: post #52
nathancahill wrote: post #3

Spent a long time reading about how vast bureaucratic inefficiencies are created by people worrying that "the wrong person" will benefit from government programs or that someone "undeserving" might get theirs before I do. This falls squarely in that bucket. Tragic.

Our education in the US is in the same position. We spend far more time, energy and money on problematic students who don't give a rip than we do on dedicated/motivated students. The goal posts aren't there. If a certain number of students fail it creates red flags for the district and if those students are a certain minority that can viewed as evidence of institutional racism and open up legal liabilities as such th…

Isn't the parent stating too many people are doing exactly what you're proposing, which is protesting that services are being provided to people who don't deserve it?

(Separating children into deserving and undeserving categories of educational attention seems that way to me...)

Re: The Vaccine Had to Be Used. He Used It. He Was Fired

#65

Post by JoshTko »

This is a complex issue. Ideally we would have a much better organized rollout avoiding these scenarios. I don't think we ever want individual physicians using their own contacts list to find candidates regardless of good intention, it just opens the door up too much abuse. I don't think the penalty matches the crime, certainly not a criminal prosecution.

Re: The Vaccine Had to Be Used. He Used It. He Was Fired

#66

Post by galangalalgol »

SamBam wrote: post #12

The same thing has been happening across the country. This is basically states failing to create a proper portal that can provide a vaccine-provider a list of the next n prioritized people in the city, and then blaming the doctors when they don't have arms to inject. This is a failure of management from the very top, and people lower down getting the blame. It is simply insane to me that most (all?) states haven't us…

Is hippa partly at fault? I wonder how much of our healthcare cost is related to hippa. The only time I have had to use a fax in the last decade is to get my medical records to a new doctor.

Re: The Vaccine Had to Be Used. He Used It. He Was Fired

#67

Post by throwaway0a5e »

kayodelycaon wrote: post #7

As stupid as this sounds, this is extremely standard policy in many, many jobs. Just because something is expiring doesn't mean you can use it against the standing rules and procedures.

In most jobs (outside of the hyper-unionized, hyper-bigCo places that are policy, checkbox and butt-covering driven and internally function a lot like government) management will cover for these kind of actions even if they're not officially sanctioned by policy. Basically what you do outside of the rules is on you but if the outcome is good you don't get fired like this guy did.

Re: The Vaccine Had to Be Used. He Used It. He Was Fired

#68

Post by zamadatix »

rjbwork wrote: post #5

This is just Kafkaesque. People in a position of authority with blind adherence to rules intended for optimal scenarios. They're literally saying he should have just thrown them away instead of distributing them as best he was able. This whole thing is a logistical clusterfuck and they're trying to throw this dude under the bus. It's obscene.

I think the logic is reasonable but the response is too strong.

A doctor driving around vaccinating whoever he can find at their house is clearly not how you want to distribute the vaccine in early December, it's not going to get to the most at risk people as soon as it can and any issues that arise are a huge liability problem unless he can fix it with what's in his car.

At the same time not having any plan or procedure of how to use the remaining vaccines or how to decide if the last batch should be opened is only going to create bad scenarios so you can't blame the person following the instructions for having a bad outcome if that's all you gave.

What's really messed up about this (and probably why the response had to be overly strong) is it was made into a news story about how he maliciously took the vaccines for his own use when really it's a story about how the vaccine rollout procedure wasn't good enough and left him in a shitty situation.

Re: The Vaccine Had to Be Used. He Used It. He Was Fired

#69

Post by hannasanarion »

david422 wrote: post #23
kayodelycaon wrote: post #7

As stupid as this sounds, this is extremely standard policy in many, many jobs. Just because something is expiring doesn't mean you can use it against the standing rules and procedures.

You are being downvoted - but this is realistic. Restaurants trash or donate expiring food. Corporations shred perfectly good hardware instead of giving it away. Not saying it's good - but there are reasons these policies are in place. It can also result in the situations we see here which sounds like this doctor had the best of intentions and is being punished for it.

They're being downvoted because they're wrong.

>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.

>Dr. Gokal said the advice was to vaccinate people eligible under the 1(a) category (health care workers and residents in long-term-care facilities), then those under the 1(b) category (people over 65 or with a health condition that increases risk of severe Covid-related illness).

>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.”

What he did was explicitly ordered by the government. It is what the health department told everybody to do, in no uncertain terms.

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