Best way to temporarily remove public access to a user's topics?

Oh, that’s interesting:

Global Ignore
This option allows you to effectively add a user or users to every member’s ‘Ignore List’. However, users in this list can still see their own posts and threads…

Enter a list of userid numbers, separated by spaces (for example: 4 12 68 102).

– https://www.vbulletin.com/docs/html/main/options_userbanning