Regarding Prof. Vinay Prasad: An Open Letter to the Administration, Faculty, and Students of University of California San Francisco
Code of Conduct Violations & H5N1 Profiteering
Dear UCSF Medicine & UCSF Hospitals,
Much of the general public puts a great amount of faith into the medical profession - a student will dedicate many years of their life to study and practice before earning the title of Medical Doctor or Nurse. We put our lives in your hands, and pray you know what you're doing when we or a loved one is on the verge of death. On the operating table, there's little room to entertain fictions or half-truths - the facts are the facts, and as such, there is little room for propaganda or delusional political agendas. The scientific laws that govern modern medicine leave very little wiggle room to "play" with people's lives and children's futures.
One of the very basic facts that any freshman medical student must first internalize is that vaccines are the medical world's greatest contribution to the public's health. Many, many years of human life have been wasted, going back to the 1800s, fighting to undermine them and their potential - and we see this sentiment stronger than ever since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. Combined with the regulatory authority of public health, modern medicine has been able to greatly reduce overall mortality and extend the average human lifespan. Yet, we all see those who openly campaign to crush these gains, and personally profit from doing so via social media revenue and speaking engagement fees.
As of the time of this writing, in the spring of 2024, America is facing a potential twice-in-a-century pandemic with the H5N1 virus. We would all hope that this is not the case - medical doctors in New York, who watched their hospitals overwhelmed with death and driven to the brink of collapse - with some healthcare workers even taking their own lives - would certainly not like to experience a repeat of early 2020. However, the "public" part of public health requires that we all share certain responsibilities to one another. If you are a credentialed medical professional speaking to the public about potential threats to their health, you are obligated to deal in the facts above all else.
Obviously public health entertains a wide spectrum of opinions - everyone has opinions. Opinions informed by scientific fact hold much more weight than those informed by political agendas or financial conflicts of interest. We also understand, especially in the vast array of scientific fields, that one can be an expert in one scientific field and know very little about another - this is what we call "specialized expertise," and it used to be generally respected, especially with regards to the diversity of experts in the field of medicine.
Vinay Prasad, hematologist-oncologist and Professor of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the University of California San Francisco School of Medicine has instead chosen to neglect his professional responsibilities and toss those obligations out the window. It is much more profitable for him to rake in social media revenue: whether it be Substack subscriptions, Youtube ads, or even Twitter Blue whilst blatantly violating the University’s Code of Conduct.
Prasad is a vocal crusader against vaccines and public health, producing mountains of media that is frankly void of scientific content, riddled with basic logical flaws, and would be better suited to the fiction section than presented as medical commentary. Any gander at the comment sections of his Youtube channel, Substack account, or reviewing his Twitter replies, will show that Vinay Prasad has cultivated a dedicated following of anti-vaccine ranters & fellow rageaholics against public health:
“I’ll say this up front. I’ll be GOD DAMNED if I participate in another lock down. That’s not happening. Also…I’ll be GOD DAMNEd if I take another vaccine that FDA/CDC/Bourla (all three are the same, no?) come up with. Thet can take the H5N1 and shove it up there collective ass for all I care. NEVER AGAIN.” -subscriber Hansang Bae, at the top of the comment section of drvinayprasad.com, May 4th 2024
Any medical professional who practices basic ethics and decency would be deeply disturbed to share an emergency room with a colleague that has cultivated such a dedicated following against modern medicine.
In regard to a potential H5N1 pandemic on our horizon, Vinay Prasad has taken to Substack to rally against the CDC, and make outlandish declarations that would, if H5N1 causes a socially transmitted airborne pandemic similar to COVID-19, lead to countless deaths and disabilities, affecting millions of American families.
Here at the Pandemic Accountability Index, we have documented years of personal attacks by Vinay Prasad against other medical professionals, often calling them "idiots," (Are Vaccine-Advocates “Idiots”, Indifferent to the Death of a Mentally Ill Woman and Her Family? by Dr. Jonathan Howard for Science Based Medicine) and making outlandish accusations against professional organizations such as the American Academy of Pediatrics, the Food & Drug Administration, and the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention. Prasad's own contributions to scientific research is to rush out as many publications as possible, with the help of fellow anti-vaccine travelers Tracy Beth Hoeg and Kelley Kröhnert, in order to artificially boost his H-index and establish a fraudulent credibility. One is left to doubt whether or not an Open Access review of Monkeypox tweets is the hard-hitting scientific research that the public's health is in dire need of. Here is a thorough review of Prasad’s “output” from 2020-2023:
An academic who frequently attacks others whilst producing so little quality work himself is little more than an armchair provocateur, who seeks to crack the whip on others with delusions of intellectual grandeur for a captive audience. As you'll see, the worst part about Vinay Prasad's recent ramblings about H5N1, is that he's playing the same tired old hits, making the same amateur mistakes, and has nothing to contribute.
Vinay Prasad's Substack, May 4th 2024: "The CDC is already mismanaging H5N1"
A very bold claim from Vinay Prasad opens his recent Substack post, but he has already accused the CDC in the past of "grave incompetence." We're going to go through this rant line-by-line and refute his claims, because every single one of them is gravely incorrect. We will also be reviewing the University of California San Francisco Campus Code of Conduct, as well as APM - 015: The Faculty Code of Conduct, from the University of California Office of the President, governing UCSF professors and pointing out Vinay Prasad's flagrant violations of university policy.
Prasad opens by running through his typical setlist: snarking about cloth masks, demanding randomized control trials that he has never ran (even with his own laboratory named after himself) and accusing the CDC of imagining pediatric COVID-19 deaths by sourcing himself as evidence, based on his own Open Access paper assembled by web designer Kelley Kröhnert, who has zero medical or scientific qualifications - apparently, typos are proof that the CDC is in an active conspiracy to fearmonger about COVID-19 in children. This is the sort of output that the University of California of San Francisco Medicine is endorsing by continuing to employ Vinay Prasad; lending the credibility of the UCSF name to utterly unscientific social media provocateurs so they may profit from mocking pediatric death.
Vinay Prasad then proceeds to boldly assume that a human-to-human transmitted H5N1 pandemic will mirror COVID-19 with zero data to support such a hypothesis, before making a bold list of declarations:
A. "There is no evidence that community masking slows influenza like viruses,"
This is a blatant, objective lie. From Nature.com: "COVID protections wiped out a strain of flu: for the first time, an influenza virus has been eliminated through non-pharmaceutical interventions. The public-health protections brought in during the COVID-19 pandemic - such as wearing a mask...eliminated the influenza B/Yamagata lineage; no cases have been confirmed since March 2020." Prasad actively attacks any evidence that contradicts his own opinions - this is not scientific rigor; this is a committment to upholding profitable fictions over objective facts.
“All members of the campus community are expected to engage in…Trustworthy conduct - including dependability, loyalty and honesty in communications and actions.” -University of California San Francisco Campus Code of Conduct, Code of Ethics
B. "That is the conclusion of the Cochrane review of randomized trials,"
The fact that Vinay Prasad is still referring to the highly debunked, fraudulent paper by fellow Brownstone Institute authors (an anti-vaccine publication owned by a neo-Confederate advocate for abolishing child labor protections) Tom Jefferson and Carl Heneghan, who both deny the objective fact that SARS-CoV-2 is an airborne virus, in Spring 2024, is evidence enough of either Prasad's grave incompetence or manipulative dishonesty. Neither is acceptable.
From an overwhelming thorough response published on CIDRAP by Lisa M Brosseau, C. R. MacIntyre, Angela Ulrich, and Michael T. Osterholm:
“The Cochrane review authors incorrectly combined studies where people wore masks or respirators infrequently with those where they were worn all the time. A careful examination of the studies where healthcare workers were required to wear the intervention throughout the day shows that respirators are more effective than surgical masks at preventing infection from respiratory viruses.”
Neither Prasad, nor his fellow "Evidence Based Medicine" fanatics, have any credentials or understanding of PPE engineering, and why randomized control trials, a tool of clinical medicine, is not employed in the research and development of personal protective equipment. With zero respect for the experts in the fields of engineering science, Prasad accuses an entire discipline of science, and multiple billion-dollar companies such as 3M, to be utterly fraudulent. A bold accusation perhaps Prasad himself doesn't fully understand he's making. The "Cochrane review" on masking is little more than a meme at this point, and the only fact is that anyone still referring to it as a credible source on the effectiveness of PPE, is a fact that they don't know what they're talking about.
To this end professors devote their energies to developing and improving their scholarly competence. They accept the obligation to exercise critical self- discipline and judgment in using, extending, and transmitting knowledge. They practice intellectual honesty. -University of California, Faculty Code of Conduct, Part II, Section B, Ethical Principles
It's worth noting that when Heneghan and Jefferson misrepresented the findings of their own Cochrane review in the media, the Editor-in-Chief of Cochrane Review, Dr. Karla Soares-Weiser, was forced to issue a correction. Vinay Prasad leapt to his fellow Brownstone authors' defense, stating that the EiC should "STFU," and publicly demanded her firing. Prasad's aggression towards women in medicine and public health is well documented. Is this the sort of professional misogyny that female students should expect to encounter on the UCSF Campus?
C. "Mandates have no evidence to support them."
Actually, they have a great mountain of evidence to support them - another bold-faced lie. Here are just a few, and you can find more in our series What COVID-19 Does To The Body, compiling the latest research on COVID-19 harms & prevention regularly:
Prasad insists that any evidence which refutes his bold, outlandish statements, assaulting the work ethic and character of scientific researchers, simply does not exist or is "poor quality," publicly mocking them on social media. Does the University of California San Francisco Medicine believe in employing someone who profits from publicly attacking the character of fellow medical professionals? Is public slander the sort of acceptable behavior that UCSF tolerates on their campus?
In an August 14th, 2022 Substack article, Vinay Prasad attacks fellow academic and frequent target of misogynistic abuse, Eleanor (Ellie) Murray, of publishing a study he claims is “is irredeemably flawed,” demands its retraction, and boldly declares “The last few kids without COVID will get COVID in the next few months or years (with or without vaccines or masks), and then they will get it again and again and again;” absolutely refusing to acknowledge the mountain of evidence documenting the harms of these infections - including death.
“In the exchange of criticism and ideas professors show due respect for the opinions of others.” -University of California, Faculty Code of Conduct, Part II, Section D, Colleagues
It’s worth noting that Prasad has zero qualifications in pediatric health.
D. "There is no evidence that school closure slowed the spread of COVID19 - the best evidence suggests it did not."
Again, what Vinay Prasad considers "the best evidence" is very poor "evidence" that only supports the opinions of himself and fellow anti-vaxxers. Back in objective reality, we know that the pediatric death count of COVID-19 during remote schooling policies - from Spring 2020 to August 2021 - resulted in only ~500 child COVID-19 deaths. When the Biden Administration designed pandemic policy based upon faulty evidence, from unqualified "experts" such as economist Emily Oster, and insisted on "normalcy" by infecting unvaccinated kids with a new deadly & disabling pathogen, SARS-CoV-2, from September 2021 to Christmas 2021, that pediatric death total quickly doubled to over a thousand in just a few months of "open" schools.
“Respectful behavior - treating everyone with civility, courtesy, tolerance and acceptance, and recognizing the worth, dignity and unique characteristics of each individual.” -University of California San Francisco Campus Code of Conduct, UCSF Code of Ethics
No wonder Prasad is obsessed with insisting that the CDC is imagining pediatric COVID-19 deaths: the child graves refute his personal opinions and are undeniable evidence that he is unscientific and uncivil in his approach to public health.
E. "Even if pandemic flu is more lethal in kids, closing schools should only be considered if it can be tested [in a highly unethical randomized control trial]"
This is a highly unethical and dubious statement. Let us entertain the delusion that COVID-19 and H5N1 are harmless in children, as Prasad insists to his paying audience on social media:
Whom are children surrounded with on a day-to-day basis? Adults - parents, and educators, mostly. Countless millions of children worldwide (Nature) have lost a primary caregiver to COVID-19, many because they were infected at school and brought home the virus, transmitting a lethal pathogen to a loved one and playing a role in their death - bereavement is one of the greatest contributors to academic hardship. Countless educators lost their lives to COVID-19 (Education Week), many because they were infected whilst teaching children.
What is left unspoken is that Vinay Prasad, often outspoken against teachers' unions, is demanding that educators are marched to their deaths in the workplace. As a university, it is insulting to faculty to be forced to work alongside someone who is willing to throw away their colleagues’ lives in pursuit of a false "normalcy."
F. "Since the CDC has not shown they can run studies, schools should not be closed."
The absurd bastardization of logic required to publish this sentence aside, if H5N1 is to become another pandemic similar to SARS-CoV-2, even Vinay Prasad's beloved Sweden shows that yes, schools will be closed. Schools are not a box to dump children into for 8 hours a day and simply forget about - they require credentialed faculty and other staff to operate. If they are getting sick and dying, then schools will go remote, or straight up shut down, disrupting education. In New York City, schools were ramming children into auditoriums and screening Marvel films, because there was not enough healthy staff on hand to educate children.
It's worth nothing that Vinay Prasad has spent years publicly rallying against any sort of engineering solution that would reduce the airborne transmission of viruses in schools - because Prasad does not actually care about keeping schools open. He profits from saying "open schools" on social media but has never critically thought about what that might actually entail beyond demanding the pointless sacrifice of educators' health & lives. Is this how Vinay Prasad feels about his fellow UCSF academic faculty? That they should volunteer to throw their health in a meatgrinder so Prasad can continue ranting in comfort from behind the safety of a screen?
G. "Vaccines for H5N1 may be generated quickly, but I won't be taking one, unless a randomized trial shows a reduction in severe disease and includes people like me,"
This is the most egregious statement of all in Vinay Prasad’s rant.
The rapid development & deployment of MRNA vaccines against SARS-CoV-2 is a modern miracle that saved an estimated 19.8 million lives in their first year alone. (Lancet Infectious Diseases) This is a vaccine that Vinay Prasad has already spent years attacking and profiting from on social media - calling them "useless" for children - countless parents across America who lost a child, or saw their child become disabled from a “mild” COVID-19 infection would certainly refute his claim.
Publicly attacking a hypothetical vaccine, before one is even available, is utterly depraved fearmongering that goes against the entire history of vaccines, pediatric medicine, and public health - utterly disqualifying Vinay Prasad from employment in any medical institution. The fact that the University of California San Francisco is lending credibility to an outspoken crusader against vaccines, even hypothetical ones, is reckless and poses grave harm to the public’s health.
It's worth noting that in another recent Substack article on May 5th, titled "COVID19 vaccines linked to myocarditis, pericarditis, ITP, Guillain Barre Syndome, Bell's Palsy, ADEM, PE, Febrile seizures & more: A new analysis of 99 million people shows the *bare minimum* increased risk of harms; For methodological reasons, the truth is likely worse; Low risk populations were harmed by mandatory vaccination," Vinay Prasad takes the work of Helen Petousis-Harris, Co-Director of the Global Vaccine Data Network, and actively misrepresents the study to such an extreme degree that Helen issues a statement on Twitter declaring:
"Vinay's comments...are based on a litany of false premises and cherry picked information. First, he asserts that the benefits of covid-19 vaccination are small. This is contrary to scientific fact. The benefits have been huge, even in younger healthier populations. He conflates an observed over expected study with a hypothesis testing study...He uses red herrings to bamboozle...He seems to not understand there are other types of studies to test hypothesis...He claims there was no accounting for age and gender. This is not true. The analysis is age-sex stratified. Vinay seems not to understand the hierarchy of vaccine safety studies."
Which is it, grave incompetence or craven dishonesty? It doesn’t matter. According to the University of California Faculty Code of Conduct:
“Types of Unethical Conduct: Violation of canons of intellectual honesty, such as research misconduct and/or intentional misappropriation of the writings, research, and findings of others” -University of California, Faculty Code of Conduct, Part II, Section B, Scholarship
This is an obscenely offensive instance of unethical misconduct. Vinay Prasad personally profits from social media revenue by openly misrepresenting the work of fellow medical academics - all to satisfy an audience of rabid anti-vaccine followers. This article has over 111 comments, all in agreement with a blatantly false statement. Worse, Vinay Prasad repeats another obscene anti-vaccine claim that has been used to attack many other vaccines:
"We repeatedly see researchers saying that COVID-19 is still worse than vaccination, but this is dishonest."
Vinay Prasad is actively engaging in dishonest behavior, yet chooses to accuse the entire medical field, which has produced mountains of evidence detailing the many harms of COVID-19, to be “dishonest” whilst repeating an ancient anti-vaccine lie about “natural immunity.” For over a million Americans, they died in the process of acquiring “natural immunity” to COVID-19, and it’s true: they can never be infected again. Because they’re dead.
H. "The use of lockdown and other government restrictions has no evidence to support it,"
What Vinay Prasad considers "evidence" is whatever personally supports his opinion, regardless of quality. He has spent years publicly attacking the world of credible medical and scientific researchers because their work refutes the opinions he is paid handsomely to spew on social media. It's important to understand precisely why the shutdowns happened in 2020 - New York City's hospitals were on the verge of collapse, with freezer trucks and mass graves becoming a common sight across the city, and the nation was faced with a brand-new virus we knew little about, which was quickly generating a mountain of corpses.
Vinay Prasad has constructed a delusional scenario where the horrors of what happened in NYC occurred all across America, and the nation would have been just fine as countless bodies mounted in mass graves. Sadly, he is financially rewarded for constantly sharing these elaborate fictions & misrepresenting them as scientific fact. With the University of California San Francisco School of Medicine name to lend them a veneer of legitimacy.
I. "...and I will personally relocate or resist if faced with these restrictions."
Here, Vinay Prasad is, at best, threatening to convert his work at University of California San Francisco to a remote position? Will Prasad abandon the patients of UCSF Hospitals? At worst, is Vinay Prasad threatening to take up arms against public health mandates initiated by the University or local government, in his “resistance?” Is advocating for the spread of deadly and disabling pathogens around UCSF faculty, staff, and students somehow considered acceptable behavior? According to the University of California Faculty Code of Conduct:
“Types of unacceptable conduct: Incitement of others to disobey University rules when such incitement constitutes a clear and present danger that violence or abuse against persons or property will occur or that the University’s central functions will be significantly impaired.” -University of California, Faculty Code of Conduct, Part II, Section C, The University
Prasad has a history of trying to present himself as some sort of resistance leader across social media, leading petitions or giving instructions on how to "push back" against mitigations to prevent nosocomial COVID-19 infections with a 9-10% fatality rate. (ABC News, Australia)
Do the doctors and nurses of UCSF Hospitals appreciate sharing a workplace with someone who personally profits from campaigning to sabotage the health of their patients? Vinay Prasad loves to present himself as some sort of heroic figure, but in reality, he's done little more than champion the spread of deadly and disabling viruses. Perhaps the medical professionals and patients of UCSF are entitled to a safe workplace that “resists” the transmission of harmful pathogens instead.
J. "H5N1 is gaining news coverage. We should follow it closely and make sure we do not relive the errors of 2019-2023."
It's important to understand what Vinay Prasad believes the sole error of America’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic was:
That we did not infect unvaccinated children quickly enough with a brand new deadly and disabling virus that was quickly overwhelming hospitals and driving exacerbated healthcare workers to take their own life.
“We must never lose sight of our ultimate goal of pursuing knowledge in order to cure, alleviate, or prevent illness.” -Sam Hawgood, MBBS & Chancellor, University of California San Francisco Campus Code of Conduct
Prasad's priority is not saving lives, but his own convenience as a laptop class academic in a wealthy metropolitan hub that enjoys all sorts of modern luxuries. He expects teachers, parents, children, and the working class of San Francisco, and America as a whole, to happily throw away their health and lives so he can continue ranting away from behind the safety of a screen for his captive social media audience. This is not medical academia or public health and is in direct contradiction to the work of the countless researchers, doctors, and other professionals of the University of California San Francisco School of Medicine and Hospitals.
In Closing
We have detailed eight violations of the UCSF Campus Code of Conduct, and the University Code of Conduct, from just a couple of recent Substack posts. A further review of Vinay Prasad’s social media activities, dating back to 2021, will find countless further violations of the high standards of professional behavior expected of a member of faculty of the University of California San Francisco.
Vinay Prasad considers himself a champion of "free speech," (when he has openly called to censure the speech of views he dislikes) and he is absolutely entitled to publish whatever rants he desires on social media. However, as a medical institution, the University of California San Francisco is entitled to protect its reputation and enforce a standard of scientific rigor and ethical behavior amongst its faculty. Medical academia is obligated to defend the public's health from unscientific disinformation. According to the University of California Faculty Code of Conduct, these disciplinary actions are available to protect UCSF’s integrity:
“…the following disciplinary sanctions authorized in the University Policy on Faculty Conduct and the Administration of Discipline, of which this Faculty Code of Conduct is an integral part: written censure, reduction in salary, demotion, suspension, denial or curtailment of emeritus status, and dismissal from the employ of the University.”
The worst-case scenario for the future of America’s health is that anti-vaccine social media artists, emboldened by professional credentials, inspire medical students to embrace the unscientific dogma of anti-vaccine ideology, a crusade that modern medicine has been fighting for centuries. You are morally and ethically obligated to take action and initiate disciplinary hearings against Vinay Prasad.