en.wikipedia.org
John Lorimer Campbell[2] is a British
YouTuber and retired
nurse educator who has posted
YouTube videos commenting on the
COVID-19 pandemic since January 2020 on his channel,
Dr. John Campbell. Initially, his videos received some praise, but later descended into
misinformation, such as the suggestion that deaths from COVID-19 have been over-counted, repeated false claims about the use of the anti-parasitic drug
ivermectin as a COVID-19 treatment,
[3][4] and misleading commentary about vaccine safety.
[5][6][7] His videos have been viewed more than 550 million times.
COVID-19
Campbell began posting YouTube videos about COVID-19 daily in January 2020. In March 2020, he argued that China's COVID-19 statistics were grossly underestimated and that the US and UK were doing too little to contain COVID-19.
[9] In September 2020, Campbell argued that more ventilation in pubs, restaurants and cafes was needed in addition to the existing mitigations.
[19]
In August 2022
David Gorski wrote for
Science-Based Medicine that while at the beginning of the pandemic Campbell had "seemed semi-reasonable", he later became a "total COVID-19 crank".
[3]
Needle aspiration
In September 2021, Campbell posted a video saying, "I think most people in the UK and the United States are giving the vaccines wrongly." Referencing a mouse study, he said when not performing
aspiration (checking the needle does not hit a blood vessel by initially drawing back the plunger) myocarditis could result. Aspiration is a common technique but not without disadvantages so it has not been recommended by many countries.
[20] The video was referenced by American comedian
Jimmy Dore on his YouTube talk show to make the misleading claim that a failure to aspirate was a cause of myocarditis.
[21]
Ivermectin
See also:
Ivermectin during the COVID-19 pandemic
In November 2021, Campbell said in a video that ivermectin might have been responsible for a sudden decline in COVID-19 cases in Japan. However, the drug had never been officially authorised for such use in the country; its use was merely promoted by the chair of a non-governmental medical association in Tokyo, and it has no established benefit as a COVID-19 treatment.
[4] Meaghan Kall, the lead epidemiologist for COVID-19 at the UK
Health Security Agency, said that Campbell was
confusing causation and correlation. Further, Kall said that there was no evidence of ivermectin being used in large numbers in Japan; rather, she said it "appears this was based on anecdata on social media driving wildly damaging misinformation".
[4]
In March 2022, Campbell posted another video on ivermectin, in which he misrepresented a
conference abstract to make the claim that it "unequivocally" showed ivermectin to be effective at reducing COVID-19 mortality, and that ivermectin was going to be a "huge scandal" because information about it had been suppressed. The authors of the study have had to rebut such misrepresentations of their paper; one tweeted that "people like John Campbell are calling this a 'great thought out study' when in reality it's an abstract with preliminary data. We have randomized controlled trials why are we still interested in retrospective cohort data abstracts?".
[22]
COVID-19 vaccine
See also:
COVID-19 vaccine misinformation and hesitancy
In November 2021, Campbell quoted from a non-peer-reviewed journal
abstract by
Steven Gundry saying that
mRNA vaccines might cause heart problems.
[6] Campbell's video was viewed over 2 million times within a few weeks and was used by anti-vaccination activists as support for the misinformation that COVID-19 vaccination will cause a wave of heart attacks.
[6] According to a FactCheck review, Campbell had in his video drawn attention to typos in the abstract, and a lack of methodology and data, but he did not mention the
expression of concern that had been published for the abstract, saying instead that it could be "incredibly significant".
[6]
In March 2022, Campbell posted a misleading video about the
Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine, claiming that a Pfizer document showed it was associated with 1,223 deaths. The video was viewed over 750,000 times and shared widely on social media. In reality, the documents cited explicitly disclaimed any connection between vaccinations and deaths reported.
[5]
In July 2022, Campbell gave an error-laden account of the content of an article published in the
New England Journal of Medicine and claimed, falsely, that it showed the risk to children from COVID-19 vaccination was much greater than the risk of getting seriously ill from COVID-19 itself. As of August 12, 2022 the video had received over 700,000 views. In reality the article showed that COVID-19 vaccination greatly reduced the risk of children getting seriously ill from COVID-19.
[23]
COVID-19 deaths
See also:
COVID-19 misinformation § Misreporting of morbidity and mortality numbers
A popular misconception throughout the pandemic has been that deaths have been overreported.
[7] In January 2022, Campbell posted a YouTube video in which he cited figures from the UK's
Office of National Statistics (ONS) suggesting they showed deaths from COVID-19 were "much lower than mainstream media seems to have been intimating" and concentrated on a figure of 17,371
death certificates where only COVID-19 was recorded as a cause of death. Within a few days the video had been viewed over 1.5 million times.
[24] It was shared by British Conservative politician
David Davis who called it "excellent" and said that it was "disentangling the statistics", and American comedian Jimmy Dore used it to claim that COVID-19 deaths had been overreported and that it proved the public had been the victim of a "scaremongering campaign".
[25][7] The ONS responded by debunking the claims as spurious and wrong.
[26] An ONS spokesman said "to suggest that [the 17,000] figure represents the real extent of deaths from the virus is both factually incorrect and highly misleading".
[25] The official figure for COVID-19-related deaths in the UK for the period was over 175,000; in 140,000 of those cases the underlying cause of death was listed as COVID-19.
[7][27]
Monkeypox parallels
In July 2022, Campbell posted a video in which he promoted the misleading idea that "parallels" could be drawn between the
2022 monkeypox outbreak and
SARS-CoV-2 virus, because the pathogens were being studied in laboratories prior to an outbreak occurring. The misinformation was embraced and amplified by Jimmy Dore and his comedy co-host
Kurt Metzger, achieving wide currency on social media.
[28]
