Institutional Cowardice Paved the Way for Trump
For years now, conservatives have constantly whined that they’ve been “censored” or have had their “academic freedom” oppressed by the University. In reality, the academy is supposed to function as a sieve of sorts – similar to an N95 respirator (Youtube) – one that filters out poor thinking and rejects bad ideas. When conservatives falsely portray themselves as oppressed dissidents, they’re simply lying to mask their own incompetence. Instead of being mature enough to admit error, these contrarians turn around and demand participation trophies in the form of the legitimization of their backwards, unscientific opinions. A casualty of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic is that depraved social media rantings are now supposed to be considered equally as valuable as quality scientific research with actual work behind it.
Over the next four years, it is now guaranteed that America will see an uptick in needless death and disability as a result of the dismantling of public health under the incoming Trump Administration. Wealthy interests who profit from population-wide pestilence as a result of our for-profit health denial system will happily reap the rewards. Medical universities such as Stanford Medicine and the University of California San Francisco will have to own the fact that they played a serious role in contributing to this needless, preventable suffering by betraying their responsibility to the public. Any serious medical institution should have a zero-tolerance policy for anti-vaccine garbage, and crusaders against public health as a whole – no matter how much money is behind them. We already know what happens when they get their way: children get very sick & die.
Instead, those who profited from fearmongering about safe & effective vaccines & championed the SARS-CoV-2 virus as beneficial to one’s health have been able to hide behind the legitimacy of credentialed institutions too cowardly to enforce basic standards of professional academic conduct, including humility, honesty, and respect. Now, the anti-vaccine movement has made their largest strides in years and is primed to destroy public health in America as we know it. Will the administration of institutions such as Stanford Medicine admit that they believe the lives of children are a legitimate sacrifice in service of a bastardized ideal of “academic freedom?”
What you’ll find is that this extended meltdown has never been about “academic freedom.” This was about blatant, unprofessional misconduct more akin to the backstage drama of a failing professional wrestling promotion, (Youtube) than a leading medical university. University administrators have either refused to enforce their own code of conduct regulations, or worse, personally endorsed patterns of behavior that include outright lying, harassment, slander, and even intimidation. The future doctors and medical scientists of these universities are learning that it doesn’t matter if you’re objectively, undeniably incorrect – as long as you’re a loudmouthed, abrasive crank who refuses to ever admit error.
Nobody is more emblematic of this plague that has emerged over the past five years than Scott Atlas, Hoover Institution fellow of Stanford University.
Exhibit A: Scott Atlas of Stanford University
From the very beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, Hoover Institute fellow Scott Atlas decided that SARS-CoV-2 was a relatively harmless and benign pathogen. In the years that followed, he would reject all evidence to the contrary – even when it came in the form of over a million American corpses. In March 2020, he wrote to CMS Administration Seema Verma (House.Gov) that COVID-19 “would cause about 10,000 deaths” which “would be unnoticed.” When the calamity of New York City immediately proved him a fool, Atlas refused to admit fault. This alone should have been justification for Stanford University to sever all ties with Atlas for his obscene incompetence, but alas.
Just weeks later, Scott Atlas would plaster his face across the media, demanding that the public embrace a brand-new pathogen that was killing so many and devastating hospitals. From the comfort of his home, whilst brave doctors and nurses risked their lives, Atlas demanded that countless millions of unvaccinated young Americans be forced to become lab rats in a nationwide experiment for a brand-new pathogen he clearly knew nothing about. When a vaccine was made widely available just a year later, Scott profited from fearmongering about the vaccine whilst continuing to insist that SARS-CoV-2 was harmless and benign. In his five years of spewing nonsense about COVID-19, Atlas has never acknowledged the many millions of Americans disabled by a virus that he insisted posed “zero risk.” For this, Stanford University should have kicked this brazen failure to the curb for his narcissistic arrogance.
While his fellow doctors were being overwhelmed by the devastation in New York, with some even being driven to take their own lives, Scott Atlas found a perverse joy in becoming one of SARS-CoV-2’s biggest cheerleaders. He would be rewarded by the crooks of the Trump Administration for his loyalty to pestilence and death, rejecting his basic moral obligations to the public as a medical professional. This was clear justification for Stanford University to condemn Atlas and sever all ties with such a perverse & depraved creep, but the administration was too cowardly to do so.
When the Stanford Faculty Senate condemned Atlas’ long record (Stanford Report) of undeniable “falsehoods and misrepresentations of science,” Atlas abused his role as a government advisor to engage in censorship, using legal threats and intimidation to silence his critics whilst Americans were dying of COVID-19 en-masse. The administration of Stanford University did nothing to defend academic freedom, legitimizing government intimidation & censorship of the facts. No degree of placation would satisfy Atlas, who would go on to make baseless accusations against Stanford University scientists testing the pediatric COVID-19 vaccine, slinging childish insults such as “brainwashed” and “psychologically damaged.”
Scott Atlas of Stanford University engaged in harassment and censorship to silence his critics, instead of accepting his academic responsibility to admit fault. Scott’s years of misleading the American public about the harms of SARS-CoV-2, something he never cared to understand, got countless Americans killed & disabled by his beloved virus. Stanford’s administration responded with cowardice and passive endorsements of this behavior, lowering the bar to establish a new professional standard with a chilling effect on academic freedom: now, being an incompetent jackass has become a protected status safeguarded by the administration of Stanford, a once-prestigious name in the medical world.
For all of conservatives’ whining about “DEI,” none of them bothered to condemn Stanford Medicine making room for such a worthless, dishonest narcissist like Scott Atlas. Years later in 2024, Atlas would insist that he was right about everything regarding COVID-19 from March 2020 forwards. Telling bold lies such as this is now considered acceptable behavior from Stanford University’s leadership.
Much like a socially transmitted virus such as SARS-CoV-2, Stanford University’s refusal to draw a fine line behind morally depraved fantasies rooted in incompetent delusion, and the realities of medical science, would begin to spread. Which brings us back to another Stanford academic, Jay Bhattacharya of Stanford Health Policy, who is looking to become the future director of the National Institute of Health.
Exhibit B: Jay Bhattacharya of Stanford Medicine
A fellow traveler of the chronically incorrect Scott Atlas, Stanford’s Jay Bhattacharya is a medical school graduate who never bothered to put in the work to obtain a medical license, instead electing to become a “health economist” who would propose such depraved, thoughtless ideals like suggesting that health insurance encourages obesity. From the safety of the halls of Stanford Health Policy, Jay was never responsible for the consequences of his poor logic. The beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic inspired a certain professional jealously in Bhattacharya, who saw the frontline doctors and nurses, willing to sacrifice everything to save lives – and often did – lionized as heroes. Jay, like Atlas, was desperate to exploit the pandemic as an opportunity to shine the spotlight on himself and falsely portray himself as the real hero of the COVID-19 disaster.
From the very beginning, Jay would commit to basic statistical errors to defend his misguided belief in COVID-19’s supposed harmlessness. Bhattacharya would publish a bunk seroprevalence study (Science) that implied the entirety of NYC, a city of almost nine million people, had all been infected with COVID-19 by the spring of 2020. Jay would never admit to this glaring error, much less correct it. He would use this “evidence” as part of his justification to advocate for the mass infection of hundreds of millions of unvaccinated Americans as part of the now-infamous “Great Barrington Declaration,” a fundamentally unserious online petition. Stanford refused to nip this nonsense in the bud, instead allowing Jay to hide his many technical and moral failures behind the legitimacy of Stanford’s name. Now the credibility of Stanford is in the mud, but more importantly, many Americans are now dead and disabled thanks to the virus that Jay personally profited from championing.
As part of this contrarian crusade, Stanford’s Jay Bhattacharya would embrace all flavor of cranks and scam artists from the anti-vaccine movement. He would frequently amplify abusive trolls and their attacks on social media, even against his fellow Stanford faculty and scientists. Jay himself would engage in immature personal attacks, branding doctors and scientists who argued for any form of preventing COVID-19 as “Covidians” trapped in a cult. Bhattacharya rejected any idea of “debate” or the possibility that he had gotten COVID-19 gravely wrong, enjoying his newfound celebrity status amongst the anti-vax crowd, blocking out the real-world scientists who had thoroughly debunked his claims with basic facts. When a Texas Tech student neglected his studies to become a social media anti-vax influencer, and was expelled for sexual misconduct, (PAI) Jay decided to give him a job at “The Illusion of Consensus,” an outlet founded to spread further mistruths about medicine and public health.
When Bhattacharya volunteered himself as an “expert witness” in lawsuits related to COVID-19, multiple judges found him unreliable and dishonest, (Important Context) citing redacted studies or speaking authoritatively on topics he clearly knows nothing about, such as PPE/masks. Stanford continued to turn a blind eye to Jay’s misconduct.
Worst of all, Stanford refused to condemn Jay Bhattacharya for his repeated endorsements of hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin, (Important Context) two treatments pushed by anti-vaccine grifters that have been overwhelmingly shown to have zero effectiveness in treating COVID-19. In fact, Americans have actually died thanks to the misuse of ivermectin – a falsehood that Stanford Health Policy’s Jay Bhattacharya was more than happy to spread in alignment with his friends in the anti-vaccine grift-o-sphere in order to fearmonger about the COVID-19 vaccine, which has been shown to save millions of lives. (CIDRAP) Lives that would have been lost if Jay Bhattacharya got his way in early 2020, using hundreds of millions of Americans as lab rats to infect with a brand-new virus he refuses to learn anything about.
For this grave incompetence and breach of medical ethics, Stanford was too cowardly to kick Jay to the curb – even after he endorsed decades-long anti-vaccine crank Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. for President of the United States, and signed a petition calling for the banning of the COVID-19 vaccine. (Twitter)
Instead, Stanford rewarded Jay Bhattacharya with his own pandemic policy “conference” in 2024 – which was overwhelmingly stacked with anti-vaccine quacks, including abusive misogynists like Alex Berenson. What a lovely message to send to Stanford’s female students, not even a decade after the Brock Turner nightmare. (CNN)
(You can find an extensive review of these proceedings here.) With the legitimacy of Stanford cloaking Jay Bhattacharya’s long record of misdeeds and brazen dishonesty, he was handpicked by Donald Trump to serve as future head of the National Institute of Health, under potential future Secretary of Health & Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. – a decades-long anti-vaccine grifter with the blood of dozens of children (Protect Our Care) on his hands. Did Stanford condemn Jay Bhattacharya for accepting this nomination, knowing that he would be following the orders of someone who has made millions spreading lies about vaccines and getting children killed?
![Vinay Prasad tweet: "Vinay Prasad tweet: "Jay [Bhattacharya] should suspend grants to [Stanford Medicine] until you overturn the faculty censure of [Scott Atlas] whose crime was being correct. "](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fcb793c4a-d3a8-45c1-ad33-a644f60fb7c2_1438x900.png "Vinay Prasad tweet: \"Vinay Prasad tweet: \"Jay [Bhattacharya] should suspend grants to [Stanford Medicine] until you overturn the faculty censure of [Scott Atlas] whose crime was being correct. \"")
Nope! In fact, Stanford Medicine publicly congratulated Jay Bhattacharya on the appointment as a shameless lackey for a sadistic crank whose top priorities are crippling one of the world’s leading medical research institutions, (Inside Higher Ed) & revive the iron lung manufacturing industry. (ABC News) The cowardice of Stanford’s administration will shape Stanford University’s legacy in the annals of American history: legitimizing the anti-vaccine movement and contributing to the needless death and suffering of countless children in the years that follow.
Unfortunately, Stanford is not the only university too afraid to crack down on bad actors desperate to raise their own profiles by lending their employer’s credibility to someone as dishonest, exploitative, and morally depraved as Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. – a misogynistic pig who drove his own wife to suicide (NY Post) after she discovered his little black book of affairs he had behind her back, rating each woman on a scale of how explicit a sex act he was able to perform with them. This is the sort of “hero” that these laptop-class academics love to champion.
Exhibit C: Vinay Prasad of the University of California San Francisco Medicine
The Pandemic Accountability Index has extensively documented Vinay Prasad’s fall from grace, as a one-time rising star in the medical science community in 2017, to disgraced anti-vaccine grifter with zero credibility outside of social media by the end of 2023. Very much a fanboy of Atlas and Bhattacharya, Prasad would also develop an extensive history of indefensible behavior that mirrored his pandemic “heroes,” which University of California San Francisco (UCSF) Medicine was more than happy to enable and reward.
Over the course of 2024, Vinay Prasad has exploited the controversy (Respectful Insolence) around Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and the credibility of UCSF to personally profit from spreading falsehoods and outright lies legitimizing RFK to his dedicated, paying audience of rabid anti-vaccine cranks that were already RFK fans.
What Vinay Prasad is too cowardly to disclose to his paying social media audience is that in the winter of 2021-22, he took money from Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. to write for RFK’s anti-vaccine rag, “The Defender,” which is part of the larger “Children’s Health Defense” grift. Children’s Health Defense is one of the largest hubs for spreading anti-vaccine falsehoods and makes RFK a significant amount of money. (Raw Story) This is an incredibly unethical and blatant conflict of interest, which compromises any credibility Prasad might have in his responsibilities as a professor & doctor and should have been grounds for immediate termination from UCSF for ethics violations.
While American pediatric COVID-19 deaths doubled in a few short months between August and December 2021, Vinay Prasad cashed a check from Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. for writing a Children’s Health Defense article titled “Zero COVID Deaths Among Healthy German Kids Ages 5 to 11, Study Shows,” arguing that “some studies are designed to distort the risks to kids.” This is Prasad’s M.O. – implying that everyone except him & his fellow pestilence sycophants are either incompetent, tyrants, or both. The following month, January 2022, would be the worst on record for pediatric COVID deaths, but Prasad found more comfort ranting from the safety of his laptop instead of treating the many pediatric COVID-19 hospitalizations occurring that winter season. Many of these children are still struggling post-acute infection, a well-documented fact that Prasad personally profits from vehemently denying. (PAI) To kick off 2022, Prasad cashed another check from RFK by attempting to smear CDC Director Rochelle Walensky as some sort of “zero COVID” radical; a childish social media insult totally detached from reality.
After getting everything he wanted under the Biden Administration, including many unvaccinated children killed, disabled, and orphaned by COVID-19, Vinay Prasad was desperate to stay relevant & maintain his Substack revenue in 2024. Because Prasad is a follower and lacks a single original thought, Vinay decided that he would follow in Jay Bhattacharya’s footsteps and lend the credibility of the University of California San Francisco name to Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. & his crusade against public health.
Shockingly, there was not a single nonsensical delusion that UCSF’s doctor and professor Vinay Prasad had the courage to condemn from the abusive crook who drove his own wife to suicide. From 2024 alone:
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Prasad legitimized RFK Jr’s conspiracy theories about fluoride in drinking water, one of the most effective public health interventions in recent history, by stating: “It’s actually not a big deal…if somebody takes the fluoride out can always take supplements if you want.”
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Prasad said RFK Jr’s conspiracy theory & plans to ban food dye were an excellent opportunity for a randomized control trial (RCT) – RCTs that Prasad demands of everyone but himself, even with a “lab” named after him.
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Prasad blames opposition to RFK Jr. from doctors & pediatricians for the stated goals of RFK, which is to undermine vaccines & get children very sick, hospitalized, and in some tragic cases, dead.
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Vinay claims “Big Pharma should be scared of RFK,” when in reality, “Big Pharma” profits from unvaccinated children getting very sick.
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Prasad legitimized RFK Jr.’s conspiracy theory that America over-vaccinates their children, by treating vaccine science as a popularity contest that needs highly unethical RCTs – the now-infamous Prasad trademark.
Worst of all however, is that on this past Christmas Eve to his paying Substack audience of anti-vaccine groupies, Vinay Prasad of the University of California San Francisco completely white-washed Robert F. Kennedy, Jr’s involvement in the 2019 outbreak of measles in American Samoa, in which RFK’s advocacy got dozens of children killed. Claiming he “had a chance to brief” himself “on the facts of the case,” Prasad proves that he is either utterly incompetent or cravenly dishonest.
The undeniable “facts” (Protect Our Care) are that Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. exploited a medical accident, resulting in two tragic deaths, to go to American Samoa and using the legacy of the Kennedy name, (Dan Freedman, Bluesky) lobbied their leadership to stop vaccinating children against measles. When a measles outbreak occurred soon after, dozens of unvaccinated children died of measles. Did Prasad have the courage to condemn RFK, and tell his COVID contrarian colleagues Jay Bhattacharya & Marty Makary to reject their nominations & denounce such a craven, unscientific crank with the blood of children on his hands? Prasad writes, and this is a direct quote:
“What did RFK say in Samoa? I don’t know but the time course makes no sense.”
This is a deeply embarrassing statement to make to a paying audience, because Robert F. Kennedy, Jr’s statement to the president of Samoa is published in full and readily available online for you to read.
Whoops.
UCSF Medicine & Hospitals have made it clear that they hold no qualms about employing someone who profits from dishonestly and/or incompetently defending a crank whose mission in life is destroying all of the progress modern medicine has made in recent history – even when it gets children killed.
Do you want the real truth, about all of this nonsense that Prasad had been spewing in defense of RFK for the past year? Well, think back to Scott Atlas and his 2020 social media antics. For weeks now, Prasad’s fans have been begging Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. to give his former contributor a role in the next Trump Administration. The same Prasad who openly fantasizes about firing “at least 10,000 more [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] employees,” a federal agency that employs a little over 11,000 doctors, scientists, and other professional adults with real-world responsibilities beyond spewing abusive vitriol online. UCSF has made it clear that being an abusive jackass online should be considered a protected status, whilst doctors & scientists with actual talents & achievements should live in constant fear of threats & violence.
In Closing
Like Stanford with Scotty 2 Wrongy & Smilin’ Jay, the University of California San Francisco administration has wasted years enabling Vinay Prasad’s toxic, destructive behavior in his unyielding pursuit of celebrity. UCSF’s cowardice is setting a terrible standard for students that will go on to become future doctors, nurses, and scientists who have been taught that the anti-vaccine movement is not something to be condemned and cast out from the halls of science and medicine, but instead openly embraced for profit and career advancement. Lashing out with abuse and other childish antics is not unprofessional behavior to be condemned, but in fact a way to grow your following and increase your exposure. Lying about the facts is no longer an unforgivable sin, but in fact encouraged – especially if it’s in defense of a sadistic misogynist with the blood of dozens of children on his hands.
Once-reputable institutions such as UCSF and Stanford will be forced to own their share of the blame of the bad outcomes in public health that occur over the next four years, because they stood idly by while their reputations were used to launder legitimacy for unscientific nonsense and sadistic quackery. Brazen incompetence and arrogant dishonesty will be the cornerstones of “public health” under the incoming Trump Administration, all thanks to university administrators too cowardly to enforce their own faculty codes of conduct. One has to ask, will other medical universities follow suit? Will state and city public health agencies be brave enough to “go rogue” and stand against a nakedly corrupt federal government spreading lies & pestilence?
Whatever is left of public health come January 2029, if it is to be rebuilt, then the first place to start will be taking up the scalpel and cutting out the cancerous tumors that are the anti-vaccine cranks which have infested medical universities and spread falsehoods for personal profit, hiding their mistruths behind the credibility of their employers. Not only are they dead wrong about medicine and science, but their extensive history of indefensible misconduct has zero place in the academy – or any professional setting, for that matter.
Looking for a PAI challenge you can do at home? Here’s a few places to start:
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Contact your congressmen and demand that they refuse to confirm Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. as Secretary of Health & Human Services. The reasons are obvious.
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Ask Lloyd B. Minor, the Dean of Stanford Medicine, how he plans to hold Jay Bhattacharya accountable as head of the National Institute of Health if Jay insists on carrying out Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s destructive & dangerous anti-vax agenda.
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Get in touch with the administration of the UCSF Division of Pediatric Infectious Diseases and Global Health and ask what they think about Vinay Prasad’s dishonest rewriting of history about RFK, Jr.’s involvement in the 2019 measles outbreak which killed dozens of children. Perhaps ask Prasad’s department at UCSF, Epidemiology & Biostatistics, – and see what they think about sharing the halls with someone who takes money from RFK, Jr.
As we enter into the public health nightmare of a second Trump Administration, the Pandemic Accountability Index humbly asks for your support, whether that be in the form of an annual $41.25 subscription (25% off until January 2nd!) or a one-time donation via Paypal. Most importantly, we ask that you share this article widely amongst your circles. Thank you for reading and Happy New Year!
