Flapping from the ‘Fact-Checkers'

Grandiose posturing in support of the official narrative

YouTuber John Campbell recently published a podcast pointing at excess mortality in countries with higher covid vaccination.  Unfortunately, he unwisely referenced some poor-quality analysis which has resulted in various 'fact'-checks from the BBC’s ‘More or Less’ and Health Feedback, an outfit that we encountered in November 2022 when they attempted a pretty poor hatchet job on Aseem Malhotra’s Journal of Insulin Resistance review articles. 

Campbell subsequently deleted his podcast – he should never have published it in the first place (John: if you’re reading this, please feel free to use our back catalogue of articles if you want to research further broadcast material, or contact us if you want us to sense-check anything).  As we have previously discussed, the confounders in the current publicly available mortality data make it very difficult to infer definitive cause and effect (this is not to say that information is not already in the hands of various public bodies, and it is rather telling that authorities are withholding such information that they could easily release to support their ‘safe & effective’ mantra).

The BBC & Health Feedback fact-‘checkers’ fail to make this point, instead using Campbell’s mistake as an opportunity to besmirch his character and qualifications.  But while they are quick to criticise Campbell’s analysis, they just as rapidly switch into myth propagation mode themselves.  After (correctly) stating that it is “important to keep in mind the caveat that a positive or negative correlation between vaccination coverage and excess mortality alone is insufficient to confirm that vaccination caused or prevented excess deaths. Correlation alone isn’t enough to prove causation” and that “data at the population level may not reflect what happens for individuals”, Health Feedback somehow manage to conclude that “countries with higher COVID-19 vaccine coverage experienced lower excess mortality compared to countries with lower vaccine coverage”.  

Precisely how they managed this leap of faith is not entirely clear (though there is an attempt to link to a handful of papers in support of their conclusion – the reader should interrogate these themselves should they wish to delve deeper). It is also worth pointing out an exquisite double standard being deployed by Health Feedback: having critiqued the use of correlation to imply causation, they proceeded to utilise this same leap of faith, observing a correlation in support of their own hypothesis of causation.

In making this leap of faith, Health Feedback manages to ignore some observations that undermine their conclusion, for example healthy vaccinee bias.  Why are so many people dying, when these miracle cures have been rolled out? And why would we necessarily expect these miracle cures to deliver lower mortality? After all, the randomised trials were not double-blinded, failed to demonstrate any reduction in all-cause mortality compared to placebo, and the placebo cohorts were unblinded early, i.e. the integrity of the control group was trashed.

Careful analysis of a UKHSA publication shows that those who have had a Covid injection are five times more likely to attend A&E. And yet the ONS (who are presumably relying on the same official data) candidly admit that – despite making numerous adjustments to account for underlying populations – they observe “a reduction in risk of non-[covid] death for vaccinated groups compared with the unvaccinated population”, i.e. they stop you dying from non-covid-related causes, a claim which is patently absurd.

The BBC ‘More or Less’ radio programme takes a similar tack, initially (not incorrectly) rubbishing the logic expounded by Campbell’s source, but then – like Health Feedback – also struggling to make headway drumming up support for the mainstream narrative.  In the end they opt for an ‘appeal to authority’ route, claiming that ‘many experts’ do, in fact – truly, madly, deeply – believe that covid injections are not associated with an increase in excess deaths.  David Spiegelhalter is wheeled out to state, gravely, that “ONS data clearly shows that the unvaccinated have higher all-cause mortality than the vaccinated”.  Of course, Spiegelhalter has form in defending the establishment narrative however ludicrous the data.

Well, ONS data is riddled with errors and shows many things, as we found above, including that being injected against covid improves non-covid mortality.  Magic. 

So much for these fact-‘checks’ from Health Feedback and the BBC – it seems they couldn’t resist the opportunity to have a pop at John Campbell, but while they have correctly highlighted the flawed logic behind his attempted explanation, they have actually failed to debunk the claim itself. The hypothesis, therefore, still stands: are the covid injections associated with an increase in excess deaths?

News from the United States indicates that 98% of the population has so far avoided participation in the latest round of injections – hardly a vote of confidence.  Pfizer’s stock price has been tanking and is at its lowest point for three years – odd for a company that moved at the speed of science™, producing a ‘safe & effective’ pharmaceutical intervention that saved the world within that time period. 

Perhaps the BBC and Health Feedback can come up with an alternative hypothesis that explains the mortality pattern in this heatmap showing data from the Office for Health Improvement and Disparities?