Quote Originally Posted by Tokyo Blue View Post
Clearly he understands more than you as he scrutinises data without an agenda and doesn't seek to reinforce a narrative. The BBC have outrightly misrepresented him and defamed him by accusing him of diminishing the emotional impact of those who have died. He should sue their bloody bollocks off.
They did no such thing.

The BBC said:

"The misleading "17,000" figure was spread by influential accounts online. On 14 January, former Islamist turned counter-extremism activist Maajid Nawaz tweeted that the figures were evidence of "narrative collapse", implying the larger reported death figures were not genuine.

"Then on 20 January, Dr John Campbell, a retired nurse educator who has amassed a huge following on YouTube, released a video describing the figures as a "huge story" and suggested Covid deaths were "much lower than mainstream media seems to have been intimating".

"His video has been viewed more than 1.5 million times to date and was shared by Conservative MP David Davis."

No mention of Campbell "diminishing the emotional impact of those who have died."

I watched both his original clickbait video and his 'rebuttal' video.

In the first video, the good doctor states within the first 20 seconds that a new freedom of information release "shows the number of deaths solely attributable to Covid may be way lower than anyone had thought." Of course, he puts special emphasis on the words way lower, because that's evidently what a significant proportion of those who watch his videos want to hear.

Within the first two and a half minutes, Campbell describes the 'new' information as "really quite profound." A minute later, he's describing it as a "huge story" which hasn't been picked up by mainstream media. It's blatantly obvious which particular gallery he was playing to with such comments.

Something struck me immediately when I watched the initial video - it was distinctly odd that an apparently legitimate health professional would be in any way surprised by these figures and would attempt to sensationalise them in the way that Campbell so clearly did. After all, any health professional worth his or her salt would know the effects of Covid-19 and would also know how death certificates are formulated, and would therefore know that the number of death certificates carrying Covid-19 alone as a cause of death would likely be relatively small.

I knew that much from my work registering deaths at sea, and I'm not a doctor or a medical professional of any kind. I'm merely a low-grade civil servant. So why did Campbell act so surprised and describe the figures as "really quite profound" and a "huge story"?

As for his 'rebuttal' video, I only watched a few minutes of that. It was toe-curling.