I think the president is 100 percent correct
Although Dr. Vinay Prasad excoriated his predecessors for not holding “broad debate among scientists” when COVID raged, he has sequestered himself in safe spaces during his time in office. Instead of answering tough but fair questions about the purges and chaos at the FDA, Dr. Prasad is making juvenile podcasts with Dr. Marty Makary and fielding softball questions from Bari Weiss, a sycophantic promoter of disinformation and groupthink.
One recent interview with Ms. Weiss was titled Trump’s Vaccine Chief on Childhood Vaccinations. In it, Dr. Prasad predictably said president Trump was “100 percent correct”. Fluffing Trump is the core job requirement for anyone in this administration, and Dr. Prasad will do so no matter what Trump says about vaccines or anything else. Dr. Prasad said:
I think the president is 100 percent correct that it is prudent to take the chicken pox shot (varicella) separately. MMRV is known to have an excess risk of febrile seizures compared to getting them (MMR and V) separately. I also think the president and the ACIP (CDC’s advisory committee on vaccines) is right to question when hepatitis B shots should be offered if a mother is negative for hepatitis B, and notably, countries like Sweden and Denmark only offer it at birth if a mother is hepatitis B positive, or a child is in a high-risk category. For folks who argue that not all mothers are screened, or that hep B surface antigen is not sensitive enough, I wonder why they don’t advocate for better screening, including use of the highly sensitive polymerase chain reaction or ultrasensitive quantitative antigen tests.
Dr. Prasad further claimed the “liberal media machine” and “liberal states” would “go the other way” merely because they opposed Trump.
Dr. Prasad conveniently absolved Trump of all blame for disease outbreaks. In response to the question “Do you draw a connection between vaccine hesitancy and messages like the one just put out by the president?” Dr. Prasad answered:
The proximate cause of measles outbreaks is low rates of measles vaccination, but the deeper causes are poverty, health illiteracy, distrust of the medical system, and feeling like we lack agency over our lives and bodies. But the most destructive thing of the last 25 years, in my opinion, is the colossal mishandling of the Covid-19 pandemic. In particular, mandating a vaccine that could not halt transmission to low-risk populations has led to massive distrust that can’t be fixed. We will have more vaccine hesitancy for a generation. The president’s comments are not the driver of what we are seeing.
Of course, thanks to people Trump and Kennedy, anti-vaccine sentiment was alive and well before 2021, when the COVID vaccines arrived, and it was Dr. Prasad and his cronies who claimed that they halted transmission. To pick one example amongst many, in May 2021 Dr. Prasad said:
For somebody who’s already been fully vaccinated, they can wear the mask out of solidarity or in a symbolic sense, but their wearing a mask indoors is not benefiting anyone else. There’s an infinitesimally low probability of even having an infection that can be detected on a PCR test, let alone being able to spread it to someone.
I never said anything like that, though this is not first time Dr. Prasad has blamed others for his words.
I think the scientific establishment blindly defending the U.S. vaccine schedule is incorrect.
However, beyond glorifying Trump, the most disturbing line in Dr. Prasad’s interview was this:
I think the scientific establishment blindly defending the U.S. vaccine schedule is incorrect.
In reality, no one defended the vaccine schedule “blindly”, and Dr. Prasad is not the only doctor on the planet who cares about evidence and can see the world clearly, free of bias. A great deal of care and effort went into creating the vaccine schedule, and previously, it was constantly being refined by thoughtful experts. New vaccines were added only when there was compelling data, and dangerous vaccines were occasionally removed from the market, as were unnecessary doses. Those thoughtful experts are long gone, having been replaced by incompetent quacks who can’t even run a single meeting- we are rookies– in a professional, competent manner.
Moreover, different countries, with different populations and different circumstances, should have different vaccine schedules. There is no single “right” one, and as with Japan and the HPV vaccine, smart countries can make stupid decisions. Medicine is not a popularity contest, and although Dr. Prasad mentioned Denmark 4 times in his brief interview, “Denmark” does not appear anywhere on the EBM pyramid.
Beyond this, Dr. Prasad may be surprised to learn that he holds a key position at the FDA, and that people he endorsed are running the NIH, FDA, and ACIP, while Kennedy is in charge of the HHS. They are the “scientific establishment”.
As such, it’s not enough for Dr. Prasad’s to sit on the sidelines and passively point out perceived problems, as he’s done for his entire career thus far, but rather to fix them and deliver tangible results for the American public. The techniques that catapulted Dr. Prasad to power don’t suffice any more. If Dr. Prasad feels that it would be better to screen all mothers for Hepatitis B (which is already recommended) than to vaccinate newborns, then it is the job of the current establishment to make that happen. As he requested, I am “advocating for” them to do this. Go ahead.
Similarly, if Dr. Prasad feels there are unresolved questions about the vaccine schedule, it is up to him and the rest of our establishment to provide the answers, as they promised they would last year. For example, in his article Sabotaging RFK Jr’s Confirmation Will Increase Vaccine Hesitancy, Dr. Prasad absurdly 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.
Where is that data? Why hasn’t vaccine hesitancy been curbed yet? Why hasn’t there been a randomized-controlled trial to determine which childhood immunization program is optimal? Although Dr. Prasad famously said on multiple occasions, “RCT or STFU,” I can’t think of a single RCT our establishment has done thus far. They’ve completely failed us.
Of course, the real problem now isn’t that children are getting too many vaccines, it’s that confused parents are refusing them and diseases are spreading. Today, the headlines read Alaska’s Whooping Cough Outbreak Infected Hundreds, With Infants Suffering the Most, Measles Outbreaks Across the US Spread As Vaccination Rates Fall, and Louisiana’s Deadly Whooping Cough Outbreak is Now its Worst in 35 Years. Meanwhile, flu season is ramping up and COVID is still here. This is all happening under Dr. Prasad’s “leadership,” and he owns it all.
However, instead of using his voice to clearly and unambiguously encourage vaccines, as any competent public official would do, Dr. Prasad is again undermining them. That’s his greatest skill. Because he can masterfully feign concern over evidence and data, Dr. Prasad is the Shohei Ohtani of spreading doubt and mistrust. It’s no surprise that with Dr. Prasad and friends in charge, Andrew Wakefield is taking a victory lap today.
It’s only going to get worse from here, and those of us on the outside the have every right to hold our current establishment accountable. The first step is for them not to deny who they are. Dr. Prasad is the establishment whether he likes it or not, and any time he moans about a problem, he is simply admitting that he his buddies have failed to solve it.