Sabotaging RFK Jr’s Confirmation Will Increase Vaccine Hesitancy
I can forgive you for thinking that my article is satire. It is not. Dr. Vinay Prasad actually published articles titled Sabotaging RFK Jr’s Confirmation Will Increase Vaccine Hesitancy and Doctors Criticizing RFK Jr. Paved the Way for His Ascendancy.
In his article Sabotaging RFK Jr’s Confirmation Will Increase Vaccine Hesitancy, Dr. Prasad argued:
The best way to curb vaccine hesitancy is to approve RFK Jr, and redirect his energies to generating more data. More data will answer the key questions that remain unanswered: which childhood immunization program is optimal. The worse thing we can do is tank his nomination. Then vaccine hesitancy will explode.
It’s hard to know where to begin with something this asinine. According to Dr. Prasad:
- Data about routine vaccines is currently lacking.
- All anti-vaxxers need to change their minds is “more data”.
- A “cluster RCT” of the routine vaccine schedule is both feasible, ethical, and a good use of resources.
- The ideal person to generate this data and reduce vaccine hesitancy is a crank who likened vaccines to the Holocaust and already has a body count of 83 dead people in Samoa, mostly children.
- Keeping RFK Jr. from office would empower anti-vaxxers more than giving him power.
I won’t insult Dr. Prasad by pretending he actually believes any of this. He’s not even trying to make coherent points anymore. It’s just bad-faith, performative argumentation and nothing else.
Doctors Criticizing RFK Jr. Paved the Way for His Ascendancy
Dr. Prasad claims that in order to save vaccines, we must place America’s top anti-vaxxer and his ecstatic henchmen in charge of our entire federal health apparatus. These are the people behind Vaxxed III: Authorized to Kill.
However, Dr. Prasad also claims that he and other contrarian doctors had nothing do with RFK Jr’s. rise, a position he made clear in his article Doctors Criticizing RFK Jr. Paved the Way for His Ascendancy.
Although Dr. Prasad claimed that COVID vaccines offered 100% protection against severe disease, that they blocked transmission and would end the pandemic, he now says that other doctors’ COVID pronouncements are to blame for mistrust in vaccines. Dr. Prasad specifically said overselling the benefits of Paxlovid paved the way for the rise of RFK Jr. If only doctors had been more circumspect about Paxlovid, we would not be in this predicament today.
Dr. Prasad is not alone in blaming everyone except himself and RFK Jr. for increasing vaccine-hesitancy. Other pro-infection doctors, even those who previously recognized the tragedy of Samoa, are now trying to get ahead of the narrative and blame those who objected to their policies of mass infection with SARS-CoV-2. In this twisted narrative, heroes such as Peter Hotez and Paul Offit, who have defended vaccines for decades at great personal cost, will be responsible when measles returns. In contrast, RFK Jr. is just the man we need to restore confidence in vaccines.
We can expect to be deluged with this upside down message as these doctors seek to proactively absolve themselves of all responsibility for what RFK Jr. might do.
Why Doctors Should Learn to Stop Worrying and Love MAHA
However, I would argue something obvious- doctors who lauded RFK Jr. and deliberately obscured his risk paved the way for his ascendancy, and they’ll own everything that happens in the next 4 years.
The day after Dr. Prasad published his article blaming RFK Jr.’s critics for his rise, his monetized misinformation Substack published an article titled Why Doctors Should Learn to Stop Worrying and Love MAHA by Dr. Joseph Marine. Predictably, Dr. Marine purposefully hid RFK Jr.’s anti-vaxx propaganda and argued that “we should embrace the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) agenda”. Dr. Prasad claims this sort of material played no role in paving the way for RFK Jr.
Indeed, Dr. Prasad spent the past year fawning over America’s top anti-vaxxer while slinging juvenile taunts at pediatricians and anyone else who provided accurate information about vaccines. The video below is one example amongst many. Here’s what Dr. Prasad had to say:
I really think the way to engage with RFK is the way you’re doing actually, and the way I’m trying to do, which is not to insult him and to give credence to what his root concerns are, which is really the concern of the corrupting influence of money. That’s his root concern, how can I trust the system? It’s so corrupt with money that how can I trust that these vaccines are really best for my children, and if there was a safety signal, you wouldn’t tell me anyway would you?
Basically, “they” are hiding the harms of vaccines.
Perhaps Dr. Prasad thought he could make these oh-so edgy, controversial statements without any consequences. He likely believed he could use RFK Jr. to build his “heterodox” brand, but that someone somewhere would surely prevent him from gaining power. However, it turns out that the words of prestigious doctors from prestigious universities with massive media footprints can actually influence the real world. Important people believed these doctors when they said RFK Jr. was right about his “root concern.”
Who could have imagined?
Along with the rest of us, Dr. Prasad had better hope the Senate blocks RFK Jr., because if he does to the U.S. what he did to Samoa, doctors who who have been sounding the alarm for about RFK Jr. decades will have a clean conscience. We tried to warn you RFK Jr. was dangerous above all else.
In contrast, doctors who gushed over RFK Jr. will be tied to him for the rest of their careers. They’ll forever be remembered for legitimizing an anti-vaxx disinformation agent to pander to their paid subscribers and that’s it. Nothing else they’ll do professionally will count, no matter how much they try to absurdly blame everyone else for RFK Jr.’s rise to power.
They made their bed, and they’ll lie in it.