Stop Trusting Public Health
Drs. Vinay Prasad and Marty Makary rose to power by telling Americans to not to trust the medical establishment. In their telling, those who tried to limit COVID weren’t just mistaken, they were manipulative liars. Watch some of the videos below to see for yourself.
Drs. Prasad and Makary hammered this message of doubt relentlessly for years, and they succeeded. Many people no longer trust the medical establishment. However now that they are the medical establishment, it’s all coming full circle. Drs. Prasad and Makary are stuck in a finger trap of their own making. Any move they make only tightens its grip.
Now, with RFK Jr. as head of HHS—and two sycophants from the FDA at his side—the anti-vaccine movement is influencing policy. It’s a dangerous time to be a child in America.
On one side, there are vaccine-experts and doctors with real-world responsibility, pediatricians and obstetricians. They are justifiably furious that Drs. Prasad and Makary have limited COVID vaccines. “We will not stand by while a single federal official unilaterally and effectively strips Americans of their choice to vaccinate with actions that thoroughly disregard overwhelming scientific evidence and decades of established federal processes,” said Dr. Tina Tan, the president of the Infectious Disease Society of America. While these organizations ignored their misinformation previously, no one is holding back anymore. Dr. Makary is even being sued by multiple medical organizations. The gloves are off.
Science communicators such Jeremy Faust, Michael Osterholm, and the hosts of This Week in Virology, routinely expose their misinformation. In one recent article about Drs. Prasad and Makary, Don’t Trust the Old FDA, Trust Us, Dr. Paul Offit wrote:
For decades, anti-vaccine activists have been shouting their false claims about vaccine safety, cover-up, conspiracy, and corruption from the sidelines. Now, with RFK Jr. as head of HHS—and two sycophants from the FDA at his side—the anti-vaccine movement is influencing policy. It’s a dangerous time to be a child in America.
Their attempts to persuade other doctors in medical journals have failed as well. Their NEJM journal article, An Evidence-Based Approach to Covid-19 Vaccination, was widely panned. It didn’t change anyone’s mind, and their fellow doctors would be only further enraged if Drs. Prasad and Makary placed further restrictions on vaccines any more. So would millions of vulnerable Americans.
The appointment of Vinay Prasad represents a catastrophic vetting failure that demands immediate action to protect Trump’s transformative healthcare agenda.
However, scolding from legitimate doctors isn’t the biggest threat to our FDA leadership. We are a mere pebble in their shoe. Drs. Prasad and Makary have real jobs with vital, but unglamorous responsibilities. They have to make sure the FDA functions, and under their leadership the headlines read Inside the Collapse of the F.D.A.
They also have more dangerous opponents on the other side of the finger trap.
Fortunately, Drs. Prasad and Makary don’t really question whether COVID vaccines benefits vulnerable populations, and they don’t want dead and suffering grandmas on their hands. They know that COVID isn’t gone, it’s spreading now, and so they wisely used broad criteria to allow people to get a COVID vaccine.
However, their MAGA base, the forces they legitimized, amplified, normalized, and promoted, is in open revolt because they haven’t completely banned COVID vaccines. The rage and conspiracies Drs. Prasad and Makary nurtured for the past 4 years are now being directed back at them. It turns out when you tell people to stop trusting the medical establishment, they stop trusting the medical establishment.
This MAGA loathing of our FDA leaders isn’t limited to vaccines. A recent editorial in the Washington Times titled Trump Agenda For Biotech Being Sabotaged From Within was all about Dr. Prasad. It said:
Dr. Prasad’s rise is an example of what Mr. Trump means when he refers to “the deep state.” He is a careerist insider, left-wing ideologue working from within to hollow out the president’s biotech revolution by ceding administrative and regulatory power back to the bureaucrats and the woke elite. Mr. Trump should remove him from his posts before he pushes his personal, anti-MAGA agenda any further, causing irreparable harm to the American biotech industry.
Similarly, MAGA influencer Laura Loomer wrote an article titled Meet Vinay Prasad: The Progressive Leftist Saboteur Undermining President Trump’s FDA that used Dr. Prasad’s previous words against him. It said:
In a stunning betrayal of President Donald Trump’s “Make America Healthy Again” vision, Dr. Vinay Prasad, a self-proclaimed progressive, has infiltrated the FDA’s leadership, securing a pivotal role as Director of the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research (CBER) after being nominated for the role by HHS Secretary Robert F Kennedy, Jr. in May of 2025. Far from being the reformist ally the Trump administration expected he may be, Prasad’s liberal ideology, outspoken anti-Trump rhetoric, and deliberate actions to obstruct the President’s deregulatory agenda make him a dangerous misfit in this critical position. His continued presence at the FDA threatens to derail the Trump administration’s mission to streamline regulations and prioritize American health. The appointment of Vinay Prasad represents a catastrophic vetting failure that demands immediate action to protect Trump’s transformative healthcare agenda.
Ms. Loomer is vile, but she is influential , and I share her words only to illustrate that the knives are out from all directions. Myself and many others have previously devoted great effort to defending doctors from such attacks, but I think most of will sit this one out.
Drs. Prasad and Makary are on their own, and they are learning that the techniques that catapulted them to power can’t sustain them now that they are in power. They honestly thought they could appease their MAGA base with podcasts about vaccine-myocarditis, talc, and food dyes in ice cream.
However, anti-vaxxers and MAHA don’t really care about any of that. They care about doubt and outrage, and for this reason they formed a strong, but temporary alliance with Drs. Prasad and Makary regarding mask mandates and Fauci. Those are distant memories for most people now. They’ve moved on to other things, though their need for doubt and outrage remain. They can no longer get this from Drs. Prasad and Makary, who have to write cheery articles such 100 Days of Embracing Gold-Standard Science, Transparency and Common Sense.
Today, robbed of their most potent weapon, their ability to spread doubt about the medical establishment, Drs. Prasad and Makary are flailing. They are discovering that their pandemic allies were intensely loyal, not to them personally, but rather to their idea that the medical establishment couldn’t be trusted. Drs. Prasad and Makary are now learning what that feels like from the other side. They are experiencing that side of the equation now.
Yet, our FDA leaders have unintentionally accomplished something truly remarkable- they’ve managed to unite Laura Loomer and Dr. Paul Offit. Their attempt to be “nuanced” only caused everyone to distrust them, and any attempt to fix things with one group will only wreck things with the other.
The harder they pull, the worse it will get.
