Hot head

I thought I could tell by the writing style of an article by Vinad Prasad that Jason Soon finds convincing that this guy seemed unduly hyperbolic in his criticisms of the CDC. 

Googling him, I see that he is indeed a ridiculous hot head, and I would not trust his assessments at all without looking at calm and detailed commentary by others:

Prasad, an oncologist and associate professor in the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at UCSF, likes a good Twitter fight. He has incited brawls over FDA’s accelerated approval of cancer drugs, efficacy of checkpoint inhibitors, usefulness of next-gen sequencing, and—in recent months—the restrictions aimed at curbing the spread of COVID-19.

In an Oct. 2 Substack blog post, Prasad argues that public health measures may have laid the groundwork for the onset of fascism in the U.S. 

The comparison set off a deluge of Twitter controversy, including accusations of anti-Semitism and ignorance of the circumstances that led to the rise of German fascism.

In the blog post and an accompanying video titled “How Democracy Ends,” Prasad speculates that in the name of public health and safety, an unscrupulous U.S. government could turn dictatorial and fascist.

“When democratically elected systems transform into totalitarian regimes, the transition is subtle, stepwise, and involves a combination of pre-planned as well as serendipitous events,” Prasad wrote. “Indeed, this was the case with Germany in the years 1929-1939, where Hitler was given a chance at governing, the president subsequently died, a key general resigned after a scandal and the pathway to the Fuhrer was inevitable.”

Also on Oct. 2, Prasad posted a link to his blog post and video on Twitter, sharing it again the next day. The Twitterverse exploded, with Prasad’s detractors battling his defenders while Prasad stood by his original point. Prasad didn’t respond to questions from The Cancer Letter, and at this writing, the post is still up.

He's a goose.

He's all too willing to allege bad motives on the part of other researchers rather than just accept that on the very complicated matter of this pandemic there can be a range of justifiable policy recommendations, based on research that's imperfect but might nonetheless be somewhat indicative of appropriate policy.