Media Roundup, 10/11/21

The issues of vaccine mandates and natural immunity in general, and my case against the UC and the State of CA in particular, have received lots of attention in the past week

In a very troubling development, several organ transplant programs are now denying life-saving organ transplants to unvaccinated individuals, regardless of whether they have natural immunity. I critique this unethical and discriminatory policy in this interview with Fox’s Kennedy (my segment runs from minute 13 to 19):

Arthur Allen at Kaiser Health News recently ran an extended piece, “Covid immunity through infection or vaccination: Are they equal?” The answer is that they are not—natural immunity is superior to vaccine immunity—but the piece is asking the right questions. To his credit, the author digs into both sides of this debate, and at least acknowledges the following, which is a significant step forward:

Evidence is growing that contracting the coronavirus is generally as effective as vaccination at stimulating the immune system to prevent Covid-19.

The article opens with a discussion of my lawsuit, which is helping put this issue on the map and making it harder to ignore the reality of natural immunity in our national conversation. This piece has been very widely distributed in the mainstream media and newspapers (e.g., here on MSNBC). To my mind, it represents a positive shift in the narrative regarding natural immunity: the topic is no longer the exclusive province of Fox News; other mainstream outlets can no longer ignore it.

Just the News ran a piece with the headline, “COVID commissars financially squeezing, blackballing dissenting doctors,” which opens with a description of my situation at the University of California. It also includes a discussion of Canadian physician Charles Hoffe, who similarly lost half his income while under investigation for sharing government data on the COVID recovery rate with patients, who are mostly First Nations members. I was pleased to see that the piece likewise drew attention to my colleague, UC San Francisco physician and health policy expert Vinay Prasad, himself a progressive, who was unjustly maligned last week in a Twitter pile-on: a piece he published (which is worth reading) was grossly mischaracterized and he was slandered with absurd slurs that are not worth repeating. This was a politically motivated hit-job, and I did what little I could to defend him on social media:

Aaron Kheriaty, MD @akheriaty

Senator Pan, this is a patently absurd and transpatent hit on @VPrasadMDMPH and his piece, which is about a hypothetical future. We know your political career has been supported entirely by Big Pharma, so your support for CA’s pandemic response is no surprise. https://t.co/VED9rfgfQL

Dr. Richard Pan 🇺🇸 @DrPanMD

What should be the consequence for a UC physician who makes such an inflammatory, unhelpful and harmful comparison of the Nazi regime with pandemic response? #NeverAgain https://t.co/9cADh3ihcH

Aaron Kheriaty, MD @akheriaty

But stand up and face critics of this pandemic response with arguments and evidence, and without twisting and mischaracterizing their arguments. I do not know how to interpret your remark about “consequences” as anything other than a thinly veiled threat. If not, please clarify.

Aaron Kheriaty, MD @akheriaty

Bullying may work in politics, @DrPanMD but in academic discourse one has to actually attempt to make reasoned arguments.

Now, maybe I’m being too optimistic and aspirational here regarding the state of academic discourse today, but I still hold out hope for reasoned and respectful arguments and public discourse.

MedPage Today (which may not be on your reading list but is widely read by healthcare professionals) ran a piece on my lawsuit last month which I forgot to flag for you. There are a few more interviews and articles from the past week which I will share with you in the next day or two. I’ll be on Tucker Carlson tomorrow (Tuesday 10/12) sometime in the 8 pm ET / 5 pm PT hour if you’d like to tune in. I will share the link to that interview when its posted as well.

Finally, I want to give a shout-out to my lawyer, Aaron Siri, who knows the vaccine mandate issue better than anyone else in the legal profession. He recently started his own newsletter and just posted his first piece, which describes our recent Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to the FDA to obtain all the data on which the Pfizer vaccine approval was based. Along with several eminent scientists and academic physicians, we filed a suit to obtain this information as soon as possible and make it available for independent analysis and review. The FDA is now obligated under Federal law to release this data, since the product is fully authorized (they were not required to do so while it was still under EUA). As Aaron explains in the post, the FDA is dragging their feet on this, as we anticipated, so we are taking legal action in the courts to apply pressure. I will keep you posted on that case as things develop.

Thank you again for your support and encouragement this past week—it has been a great source of consolation during a challenging time for me and my family. If you’re finding this newsletter helpful, consider sending a gift subscription to someone you know who is likewise concerned about the issue of vaccine mandates (or consider subscribing yourself if you’re signed up for the free newsletter). This is a practical way to support me and my continued legal efforts to challenge coercive vaccine mandates. If one of my cases can set a precedent in Federal Court, that precedent will benefit all who are subjected to these unjust mandates.