I also want them to admit they didn’t run any studies even though people told them to
From claiming COVID vaccines were perfect and would end the pandemic to treating rare, temporary vaccine side-effects, even abnormal lab values, as a fate worse than death, Dr. Vinay Prasad spread copious COVID misinformation. It’s taken volumes to begin to categorize his attempts to repeatedly infect unvaccinated children with SARS-CoV-2.
As SBM readers know, one of the chief ways Dr. Prasad spread doubt and mistrust was via methodolatry. Except for vaccine side-effects, Dr. Prasad claimed that only randomized-control trials (RCTs) could inform medical decisions and that unwanted mitigation measures were useless unless they proved themselves via an RCT for every variant and demographic subgroup.
Despite his professed love for RCTs, Dr. Prasad has not made a real-world contribution to one as far as I know. Rather than do the hard work to advance such research, Dr. Prasad sat on the sidelines and excoriated public health officials for not doing every trial he imagined. On his many monetized social media platforms, Dr. Prasad created long lists of RCTs they failed to do. He said:
In the decades to come post COVID, the greatest failure will be a failure to generate better data. It is forgivable to be ignorant in March 2020, but we failed:
Zero randomized trials of school closure
Zero randomized trials business closures
Zero randomized trials on masking in schools
Zero randomized trials on masking kids
Zero randomized trials on masking in USA
Zero randomized trials of 3 vs 6 ft Zero randomized trials of cohorting
Zero randomized trials of installing HEPA filters
Zero randomized trials of masking, post vaccine
Zero randomized trials testing alternative dosing strategies of vax (post phase 3)
Zero randomized trials of whatever foolishness we are doing on college campuses
Zero randomized trials of asymptomatic testing
Zero randomized trials of quarantine duration
Zero randomized trials of testing for preschool/ school
Zero randomized trials of plexiglass
Zero randomized trials of wearing your mask from the door to table, and table to bathroom, but at no other points during your restaurant experience
Yet many of these things were wrongfully called parachutes by at least some people who should know better. Leaving a pandemic as ignorant as we entered is awful It is also why all of these issues have become political and not scientific. Science should be ashamed of itself. In 100 years we will look as primitive as the folks who survived the plagues of the middle ages.
Dr. Prasad made it sound like running RCTs was very easy, and he implied that public health officials could have done them had they been willing. In a recent paper with Dr. John Ioannidis titled Evidence Base for Yearly Respiratory Virus Vaccines: Current Status and Proposed Improved Strategies, he said:
We propose a new research framework which would render results relevant to the current or future respiratory viral seasons. We demonstrate that experimental studies are feasible by adopting a more pragmatic approach and provide strategies on how to do so. When it comes to implementing policies that seriously impact people’s lives, require substantial public resources and/or rely on widespread public acceptance, high evidence standards are desirable… RCTs are feasible and not prohibitively expensive if one incorporates pragmatic elements.
By saying that such RCTs are both feasible and necessary, Dr. Prasad portrayed himself as a hero of evidence-based medicine, who was merely upholding rigorous standards.
In contrast, he depicted doctors who recognized the challenges and limits of RCTs, even those of us who participated in them, as being careless and lax about scientific evidence. He made his thoughts clear in an article titled The Scientists Who Undermine Randomized Trials, in which he said:
In the last few weeks there have been several examples of scientists trying to undermine randomized trials— arguing they are not possible, not practical, or not useful. All of these arguments are false.
In less filtered moments- and there were many such moments– Dr. Prasad viciously attacked these scientists with vulgar, juvenile, unprofessional slurs. “These pieces of shit are still lying… they are still fucking lying,” he said. “I also want them to admit they didn’t run any studies even though people told them to,” he added. Although Dr. Prasad didn’t do much the past 5-years, he was very impressed with himself for having told them what to do. In his vision, typing lists of RCTs on Twitter was hard. Actually doing them would have been easy. Had Harris won, there is no doubt that Dr. Prasad would be demanding RCTs from the Medical Establishment.
RFK Jr. picks controversial doctor as top vaccine regulator
Well, guess what. Trump won and earlier this week, Dr. Vinay Prasad was named as head of the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, which regulates vaccines and gene therapist. Congratulations to him. As one person said on social media:
I wish Vinay all the best for his new role. It’s a whole new state of play when the buck stops with you.
Indeed, it’s time for Dr. Prasad to stop telling other people what to do and to start doing those things himself. After years of profane rants against the Medical Establishment, Dr. Prasad is now the Medical Establishment. It is his turn to shine and deliver results for the taxpayers who pay his salary. Along with the heads of the NIH and FDA, it’s his job to do everything he “told” his predecessors to do. Dr. Prasad set a high bar for them, and he has a golden opportunity to dazzle us all and succeed where they failed.
Corrupt Doctors
Conversely, those of us outside the Medical Establishment have the right to tell Dr. Prasad what to do, just like he did with his predecessors. Measles and whooping cough are spreading under his watch now, and I am telling him to loudly refute his boss’s anti-vaxx disinformation. Until then, his silence will speak volumes. Additionally, we should all feel free to create lists of RCTs and tell Dr. Prasad to do them. Feel free to create your own list in the comments. I obviously expect him to do the vaccine-RCTs he had previously demanded. After all, he said they were “feasible by adopting a more pragmatic approach,”
It will not suffice for Dr. Prasad to again tell someone else- Big Pharma is the bogeyman this time- to do these trials. The technique that catapulted him into power isn’t going to work now that he’s in power. Dr. Prasad has been reasonably skeptical of pharma trials his entire career. He has since told the public that vaccine companies make “garbage products” and that only conflicted, “corrupt doctors” work for them. His message resonated with many people. If a Pfizer trial found the Pfizer vaccine was a smashing success, many people would distrust the results thanks to Dr. Prasad and his ilk. Is Dr. Prasad suddenly telling us that only Big Pharma can be expected to generate evidence for the American public? Is the Medical Establishment is suddenly off the hook?
Of course not.
That’s why it’s now his job to do these RCTs, and he needs to get started right away. Flu season is coming, and COVID boosters are waning. As he wrote, “phase III trials may start early in the season and must be powered for clinically relevant outcomes.” As things stand now, the Medical Establishment in threatening to disregard our medical freedom by taking away the COVID vaccine without an RCT showing us that is safe. That is unacceptable.
If Dr. Prasad fails to live up to the standards he set for his predecessors, I can treat him the same way he treated them. If 4 years from now, he does not have a portfolio of successful RCTs he has completed, his tenure will have been a total failure, and I can mock, berate, and humiliate him for this. I can write articles about scientists like him who undermine randomized trials and I supposed I can make childish, profane videos calling him and the rest of our Medical Establishment lying “pieces of shit”.
After all, I’ve done the hard work already. I told him exactly what to do.
