> Pleased that Youtube has reinstated my interview. I appreciate all of the support. Nobody knows what's going to happen with this pandemic - debate is always a good thing! I think preparing for the worst, but hoping for the best is a sensible strategy.
I don’t agree with the interview contents, nor think professorship alone gives sufficient credibility in the face of a novel pandemic, data of which is in the process of emerging. That said, I don’t want youtube to be in charge of deciding what is credible or not. They don’t have in-house experts on these domains, they don’t have a magic epistemology machine that spits out the “facts”. They are good at writing web services, they shouldn’t be in charge of things like sound epidemiology.
I always imagine past figures that had adversarial relationships with authority at their times like Socrates, Galileo or Jesus and realize how Youtube would definitely take their videos down, shut their channels down and Susan Wojcicki would say things like “on matters of geocentricity vs heliocentricity we will follow the expert opinion of Catholic Church”. Then I think how might we be hurting ourselves today in ways we don’t even know by letting these tech institutions be the ultimate arbiter of our meaning making machinery.
And on the other end of the spectrum we have people being indoctrinated into violent conspiracy groups like QAnon, or being prompted to set fire to cell towers, or bringing measles back from the dead, because of YouTube videos. There's a line to be drawn here - and it's a tricky line, to be sure - but "YouTube should be totally neutral and not pull anything" is not a viable answer.
> I don’t want youtube to be in charge of deciding what is credible or not
This point is often repeated during discussions on these topics but I believe this is an inaccurate characterization. YouTube is not "in charge of deciding what is credible" in the fashion that kind of phrasing suggests; they are moderating the content on their platform with respect to their business process and company values, those decisions are not a reflection of credibility. YouTube is a corporate product and we should not encourage the narrative that this product is the zenith of knowledge even though there are knowledgeable people who put content on YouTube.
> I don’t want youtube to be in charge of deciding what is credible or not.
YouTube has to make these decisions because there's no one else willing or able to do the job. If the government established a Department of Social Media to do the same work, HN would be losing its mind over government censorship. And if YouTube does nothing at all, it ends up hosting terrorist recruiting videos and instructional videos on how much bleach to drink to kill coronavirus.
You might be uncomfortable with the role of big tech companies in moderating content but, until you can provide an alternative, your discomfort does not override the imperative to save human lives.
I have been following unherd for a bit and while they are on the let's do as the Swedes side of things, this is wellreasoned long form interviews with established experts and opinion makers.
I don't understand mechanism on why something like this gets censored. I think it is obvious that this sort of "overcensoring" will come back on youtube in a negative way; and possibly even hurt the case for lockdowns and careful reopening.
Youtube isn't in charge of what is credible or not. Youtube is in charge of what shows up on youtube or not. There are many categories of things that can't be on youtube, not just things youtube thinks are incorrect.
Should youtube overstep its bounds, that makes it easier for competitors to enter the video streaming market. It seems like libertarian leaning people forget half of their philosophy on this issue.
In my view from the ten minutes I watched he didn’t state anything any more off base than the WHO has over the time the pandemic has been spreading. There is uncertainty and we’re yet to understand it thoroughly.
Given that, I think this is gross overreach by YT in establishing narrative. What happens if their management becomes a bunch of anti-vaxxers, do they get to set the tone?
The fact there is a global pandemic going on that requires the cooperation of virtually everyone is important context here.
Meanwhile, YouTube does little moderation of zany philosophical, conspiratorial, or otherwise disruptive, unconventional content. The ideas of Galieo, Socrates, Jesus etc. fall into this category. That is to say those figures did not promote public health opinions that undermined a global cooperative effort in a time of crisis.
I don't agree with censorship, but your analogy is off base.
These types of censorship patterns are identical to that employed by China in intent. The practical consequences are the same as well.
In China information censorship is due to the government trying to promote peace and harmony. Aka, the government thinks it knows what’s best for people and forces it on people.
Facebook et al also encounter these same problems, where they see people spreading “misinformation.” It’s a hard problem to solve, but they essentially resort to taking the same types of censorship as China that everyone so easily criticizes.
The irony is Google is now doing it too after claiming to have left the market due to forced censorship.
Some people may cite China’s censorship/banning of Falun Gong. What people don’t bother to look into is that Falun Gong is an anti-gay, really out there cult. Their censorship justifications of that is not unlike censoring “fake news” like this “doctor.” While it may be right (of course their methodology may be questionable), it completely short circuits the ability for critical thinkers to actually analyze all content. It’s done supposedly for the greater good.
As long as you can host your video on your own website, that's not the same. If you own website, you have all rights to do any censorship you want. Now if your government will try to fine or arrest you because you hosted some video on your website, that's censorship. You can avoid youtube, but you can't avoid your government.
That said, I agree that huge websites like youtube, facebook, instagram are something more than just another web resource and probably some regulations should be applied to them. But it's very sensitive subject.
> The practical consequences are the same as well.
Is YouTube sending people to "re-education camps" now?
If a private platform kicks you out, you can host your stuff elsewhere. If a state censors you, it can use lethal force to silence you. Pretty big difference.
I'm sympathetic to Chinese-style censorship, at least in theory before it degenerates into the state trying to suppress anything it considers embarrassing to itself. "The government thinks it knows what’s best for people" because it does know better than most people. Facebook, as the lowest common denominator for American public discourse, is a cesspool of misinformation, pseudoscience, hate, deceptive advertising, and people losing their skin in MLM scams. In India, fake stories on WhatsApp have whipped up violent mobs into a frenzy of xenophobia, resulting in tragic murders of innocent migrants. We should be more aware of the enormous costs associated with a lassie-faire attitude toward speech, even if we decide it's worth the cost. "A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals and you know it."
All that being said, the practical consequences of YouTube moderation are not even remotely the same as those of the Chinese censorship that everyone criticizes. The worst thing that can happen to you on YouTube is that you can't comment or upload videos anymore. YouTube is not sending people to prison or calling up your employer to tell them you're a dangerous agitator.
Why on earth does this have to be compared to China? And Falun Gong?!
This is long form journalism with establishment figures such as university professors.
YouTube censors clearly overstepped their "mandate" here. And Unherd has other ways of publicising this particular interview and drawing attention to YouTube's censorship.
Yep. It seems to have started with the 2016 election which left popular opinion being that there's a huge part of the population who are too stupid to think for themselves and must be shielded from bad ideas in case they believe them and harm the rest of us with them. Now that such an idea is readily accepted, censorship is easily seen as the morally right thing to do in lots of cases. The feeling is that we're protecting ourselves from real harm by people who really don't have the ability to correctly evaluate the information they receive. Just like China doing it for social harmony. It's not just terrorism and child porn that people tolerate censorship for anymore, it's for 5G and flat earth conspiracy theories, anti-religious ideas, nationalism, and all sorts of "misinformation".
>These types of censorship patterns are identical to that employed by China in intent.
At the end of the day, Youtube's intent is to make as much money as possible. If Youtube didn't censor a lot of misinformation videos, people would get mad and demand advertisers to stop advertising on Youtube.
> These types of censorship patterns are identical to that employed by China in intent. The practical consequences are the same as well.
True, if you ignore the fact that China is a government and YouTube is an internet video portal. And that there are sites like HN that can point it out. And that YouTube isn't taking steps to cover up what they've done.
But yeah, let's compare the policing of bad information in a pandemic that gets people killed, where YouTube doesn't benefit from the "censorship", to what China's government is doing. At least you get to feel good about your purity when you're posting comments on HN, secure in the knowledge that you don't have a teenager or a parent that might die as a result.
According to this guy's Wikipedia page, he has claimed many times to be a professor of oncology at Imperial College: but he is not, and Imperial College has sought legal options to stop him from making this claim.
The page is full of other fairly astonishing stuff, not the least of which is apparent fraud connected with the Lockerbie Bombing.
> Sikora and the School of Medicine at Buckingham have in the past been supportive of alternative medicine. For a short time, Buckingham offered a diploma in "integrated medicine" (a relatively recent euphemism for alternative medicine). Sikora was a Foundation Fellow of Prince Charles' now-defunct alternative medicine lobby group The Prince's Foundation for Integrated Health[24] and Chair of the Faculty of Integrated Medicine, which is unaffiliated with any university; it includes Drs Rosy Daniel and Mark Atkinson, who led Buckingham's "integrated medicine" course.
>
> Sikora is also a "professional member" of the College of Medicine, a patient-oriented healthcare lobby group also linked to the Prince of Wales that appeared shortly after the collapse of the Prince's Foundation. The College has been criticised extensively in the British Medical Journal for its promotion of alternative medicine. These claims have been contested by the College. He is on the advisory panel of complementary cancer care charity Penny Brohn Cancer Care (formerly the Bristol Cancer Help Centre) of whom Prince Charles is a patron, and is a patron of the Iain Rennie Hospice at Home. Statements by Sikora have been critical of unproven methods of alternative medicine, after Parliament member Lord Maurice Saatchi proposed a bill allowing doctors to use unproven experimental therapies, and he has spoken out against claims that an alkaline diet can cure cancer.
It sounds like he might actually have infringed Youtube's "Harmful or dangerous content" guidelines:
> Harmful or dangerous content
>
> Don't post videos that encourage others to do things that might cause them to get badly hurt, especially kids. Videos showing such harmful or dangerous acts may get age-restricted or removed depending on their severity.
I don't really care the content at all, but I really wish these platforms took the "phone company" approach, in which they considered themselves neutral carriers of information. In the US, I don't know an obvious issue besides legislative change to enforce this.
However, once they consider themselves as "curators" of information with near-monopoly status, I hope they are litigated against successfully.
I think that we often get hung up on the what-ifs of censorship while misinformation is doing damage right this second.
The problem is that people don't evaluate 2 narratives equally based on the information in them. If that was the case, you would just have to make sure that for every bogus report there is a reliable report, but once misinformation takes hold it takes a lot more than that to dislodge. The analogy I think of is that when presented with a table full of junk food, its hard to get people to pay attention to the veggie platter.
This study[1] indicates more success could be had with a new narrative that doesn't just refute the misinformation, but crafts a new narrative with additional information that can dislodge the other one, like a flank attack instead a head on one. Anecdotally I've seen that work and I've also been guilty of the lazy head on approach and seen it fail.
This is a bad trend. If scientists in China contradicted the government (and directly - the WHO), it seems like YouTube would have censored them. Debate is what sustains free society and free society will perish when certain narratives become unquestionable.
It's probably about time we start discussing as a developer community how to take meaningful actions to curb this behavior. Putting the particular topic details here aside, I think everyone can agree it's very troubling that a platform with as much power as Google is actively censoring speech they do not agree with.
Not sure what the best action points would be, but I'm thinking we start by speaking with our companies about redirecting ad-spending away from Google, pausing any active development related to integrating Google products and seek out alternatives, removing/replacing Google analytics (since this is where tons of value is created for Google and allows them to follow users basically everywhere), and seriously talk about unionization next-steps. Thoughts?
He is a oncologist so not an expert in the field of epidemiology.
The virus is getting "tired" ... really.
Lots of these contrarian "experts" popping up in youtube channels with rather slick production values (wonder who is funding them) about social distancing and lock down policies.
YouTube consistently followed their policy of removing videos which promote misinformation, disinformation, and policy proposals that contradict the World Health Organization's official guidelines during an emergency pandemic.
I have my problems with YouTube, but this isn't censorship, and it isn't a conspiracy to silence anyone. It's an effort to be responsible to public health and safety. The hysteria I see here is completely unwarranted.
I understand the theoretical basis for removing misinformation and disinformation, but policy proposals is an entirely different ballpark.
Two reasonable people can agree on the underlying facts but disagree on policy.
Additionally, this is absolutely censorship and an effort to silence people. It is not an illegal act of censorship. similarly, you can agree that it is legal, but still not like the censorship.
Until February, WHO was saying COVID does not spread human to human and travel restrictions won't help. So anyone who said "it does spread human to human" and "travel restrictions will help" was considered misinformation and conspiracy theorist.
February onwards, WHO did a full 180. But everyone who got censored before then was the victim.
Same thing about effectiveness of wearing masks.
So anyone pointing out the obvious that "China cannot have lesser deaths than Canada" is considered a "misinformation, disinformation and conspiracy theorists" because they "contradict the World Health Organization's official guidelines during an emergency pandemic".
How people don't see the clear danger of such censorship is beyond me. WHO also says China has been transparent.
> The serology results around the world (and forthcoming in Britain) don’t necessarily reveal the percentage of people who have had the disease
> He estimates 25-30% of the UK population has had Covid-19, and higher in the group that is most susceptible
Here's the Office for National Statistics household survey results. This is only people living in households. (It doesn't include hospital patients, or people living in care or nursing homes).
> Our latest estimates indicate that at any given time during the two weeks from 4 May to 17 May 2020, an average of 137,000 people in England had the coronavirus (COVID-19) (95% confidence interval: 85,000 to 208,000). This equates to 0.25% (95% confidence interval: 0.16% to 0.38%) of the population in England. This estimate is based on tests performed on 14,599 people in 7,054 households.
Frustratingly they haven't said yet how many people in total they think have ever had covid-19, but it's not going to be anywhere near 15million people in the UK.
I can't help but wonder if there is a generational divide occurring in these censorship debates. Some contributors to the discussion seem to believe that everyone has a natural right to post a video and have it available to (if not see by) a global audience. As someone who grew up in the 1980s this is a strange point-of-view to me, but I can see how it might feel more natural to someone who came of age in the 2010s.
Appalling behaviour by YouTube.
Until recently I admired Google, no longer, this kind of opinion based censorship (facts have yet to be established re covid), makes my blood boil, Google must be urgently regulated to protect free speech.
The video seems to be back up: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uk2YZfnsOPg. Probably got caught up in some sort of automated COVID misinformation algorithm. Given the content of the video, I'm not inclined to place much weight on their side of the story here. This feels like fake outrage to drive views.
This isn't the first time it happened nor will it be the last. Here in my country (Brazil) they invited an actual toxicologist, professor and ambassador of medical facility in São Paulo (since 2009) to speak live at CNN but when he mentioned that there's an over-exageration in terms of deadlyness and started putting actual data, studies and past examples in his speech, he was promptly and unapologetically interupted, we can even hear someone say "cut" in the broadcast, before the newswomans interupts him by saying, I kid you not, "We cannot continue the interview because the doctor is not able to listen to us..." all while the doctor was made silent by this statement. Makes me wonder who makes these decisions.
[+] [-] burke_holland|5 years ago|reply
https://youtu.be/uk2YZfnsOPg
[+] [-] busymom0|5 years ago|reply
https://twitter.com/ProfKarolSikora/status/12635183523471482...
[+] [-] takeda|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] acituan|5 years ago|reply
I always imagine past figures that had adversarial relationships with authority at their times like Socrates, Galileo or Jesus and realize how Youtube would definitely take their videos down, shut their channels down and Susan Wojcicki would say things like “on matters of geocentricity vs heliocentricity we will follow the expert opinion of Catholic Church”. Then I think how might we be hurting ourselves today in ways we don’t even know by letting these tech institutions be the ultimate arbiter of our meaning making machinery.
[+] [-] _bxg1|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] root_axis|5 years ago|reply
This point is often repeated during discussions on these topics but I believe this is an inaccurate characterization. YouTube is not "in charge of deciding what is credible" in the fashion that kind of phrasing suggests; they are moderating the content on their platform with respect to their business process and company values, those decisions are not a reflection of credibility. YouTube is a corporate product and we should not encourage the narrative that this product is the zenith of knowledge even though there are knowledgeable people who put content on YouTube.
[+] [-] lordlic|5 years ago|reply
YouTube has to make these decisions because there's no one else willing or able to do the job. If the government established a Department of Social Media to do the same work, HN would be losing its mind over government censorship. And if YouTube does nothing at all, it ends up hosting terrorist recruiting videos and instructional videos on how much bleach to drink to kill coronavirus.
You might be uncomfortable with the role of big tech companies in moderating content but, until you can provide an alternative, your discomfort does not override the imperative to save human lives.
[+] [-] riku_iki|5 years ago|reply
What are the other options? Is there any good_or_not(url) API youtube service can call? They are forced to moderate content.
[+] [-] chvid|5 years ago|reply
I don't understand mechanism on why something like this gets censored. I think it is obvious that this sort of "overcensoring" will come back on youtube in a negative way; and possibly even hurt the case for lockdowns and careful reopening.
[+] [-] iso947|5 years ago|reply
Does YouTube remove flat earth idiots?
[+] [-] NotDaveLane|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] inakarmacoma|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gameswithgo|5 years ago|reply
Should youtube overstep its bounds, that makes it easier for competitors to enter the video streaming market. It seems like libertarian leaning people forget half of their philosophy on this issue.
[+] [-] mc32|5 years ago|reply
Given that, I think this is gross overreach by YT in establishing narrative. What happens if their management becomes a bunch of anti-vaxxers, do they get to set the tone?
[+] [-] unknown|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] zumu|5 years ago|reply
Meanwhile, YouTube does little moderation of zany philosophical, conspiratorial, or otherwise disruptive, unconventional content. The ideas of Galieo, Socrates, Jesus etc. fall into this category. That is to say those figures did not promote public health opinions that undermined a global cooperative effort in a time of crisis.
I don't agree with censorship, but your analogy is off base.
[+] [-] chrischen|5 years ago|reply
In China information censorship is due to the government trying to promote peace and harmony. Aka, the government thinks it knows what’s best for people and forces it on people.
Facebook et al also encounter these same problems, where they see people spreading “misinformation.” It’s a hard problem to solve, but they essentially resort to taking the same types of censorship as China that everyone so easily criticizes.
The irony is Google is now doing it too after claiming to have left the market due to forced censorship.
Some people may cite China’s censorship/banning of Falun Gong. What people don’t bother to look into is that Falun Gong is an anti-gay, really out there cult. Their censorship justifications of that is not unlike censoring “fake news” like this “doctor.” While it may be right (of course their methodology may be questionable), it completely short circuits the ability for critical thinkers to actually analyze all content. It’s done supposedly for the greater good.
[+] [-] vbezhenar|5 years ago|reply
That said, I agree that huge websites like youtube, facebook, instagram are something more than just another web resource and probably some regulations should be applied to them. But it's very sensitive subject.
[+] [-] pornel|5 years ago|reply
Is YouTube sending people to "re-education camps" now?
If a private platform kicks you out, you can host your stuff elsewhere. If a state censors you, it can use lethal force to silence you. Pretty big difference.
[+] [-] lordlic|5 years ago|reply
All that being said, the practical consequences of YouTube moderation are not even remotely the same as those of the Chinese censorship that everyone criticizes. The worst thing that can happen to you on YouTube is that you can't comment or upload videos anymore. YouTube is not sending people to prison or calling up your employer to tell them you're a dangerous agitator.
[+] [-] chvid|5 years ago|reply
This is long form journalism with establishment figures such as university professors.
YouTube censors clearly overstepped their "mandate" here. And Unherd has other ways of publicising this particular interview and drawing attention to YouTube's censorship.
[+] [-] lopmotr|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Aunche|5 years ago|reply
At the end of the day, Youtube's intent is to make as much money as possible. If Youtube didn't censor a lot of misinformation videos, people would get mad and demand advertisers to stop advertising on Youtube.
[+] [-] unknown|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] bachmeier|5 years ago|reply
True, if you ignore the fact that China is a government and YouTube is an internet video portal. And that there are sites like HN that can point it out. And that YouTube isn't taking steps to cover up what they've done.
But yeah, let's compare the policing of bad information in a pandemic that gets people killed, where YouTube doesn't benefit from the "censorship", to what China's government is doing. At least you get to feel good about your purity when you're posting comments on HN, secure in the knowledge that you don't have a teenager or a parent that might die as a result.
[+] [-] logicslave|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] Benmcdonald__|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] SeanLuke|5 years ago|reply
According to this guy's Wikipedia page, he has claimed many times to be a professor of oncology at Imperial College: but he is not, and Imperial College has sought legal options to stop him from making this claim.
The page is full of other fairly astonishing stuff, not the least of which is apparent fraud connected with the Lockerbie Bombing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karol_Sikora
I get the feeling that there's more to this story than this article suggests.
[+] [-] otikik|5 years ago|reply
> Promotion of alternative medicine
> Sikora and the School of Medicine at Buckingham have in the past been supportive of alternative medicine. For a short time, Buckingham offered a diploma in "integrated medicine" (a relatively recent euphemism for alternative medicine). Sikora was a Foundation Fellow of Prince Charles' now-defunct alternative medicine lobby group The Prince's Foundation for Integrated Health[24] and Chair of the Faculty of Integrated Medicine, which is unaffiliated with any university; it includes Drs Rosy Daniel and Mark Atkinson, who led Buckingham's "integrated medicine" course. > > Sikora is also a "professional member" of the College of Medicine, a patient-oriented healthcare lobby group also linked to the Prince of Wales that appeared shortly after the collapse of the Prince's Foundation. The College has been criticised extensively in the British Medical Journal for its promotion of alternative medicine. These claims have been contested by the College. He is on the advisory panel of complementary cancer care charity Penny Brohn Cancer Care (formerly the Bristol Cancer Help Centre) of whom Prince Charles is a patron, and is a patron of the Iain Rennie Hospice at Home. Statements by Sikora have been critical of unproven methods of alternative medicine, after Parliament member Lord Maurice Saatchi proposed a bill allowing doctors to use unproven experimental therapies, and he has spoken out against claims that an alkaline diet can cure cancer.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karol_Sikora#Promotion_of_alte...
It sounds like he might actually have infringed Youtube's "Harmful or dangerous content" guidelines:
> Harmful or dangerous content > > Don't post videos that encourage others to do things that might cause them to get badly hurt, especially kids. Videos showing such harmful or dangerous acts may get age-restricted or removed depending on their severity.
Source: https://www.youtube.com/about/policies/#community-guidelines
[+] [-] benjaminwootton|5 years ago|reply
He's being deplatformed for even slightly questioning the conventional wisdom.
Wow! These tech companies hold way too much power.
https://mobile.twitter.com/ProfKarolSikora
[+] [-] mchusma|5 years ago|reply
However, once they consider themselves as "curators" of information with near-monopoly status, I hope they are litigated against successfully.
[+] [-] okreallywtf|5 years ago|reply
The problem is that people don't evaluate 2 narratives equally based on the information in them. If that was the case, you would just have to make sure that for every bogus report there is a reliable report, but once misinformation takes hold it takes a lot more than that to dislodge. The analogy I think of is that when presented with a table full of junk food, its hard to get people to pay attention to the veggie platter.
This study[1] indicates more success could be had with a new narrative that doesn't just refute the misinformation, but crafts a new narrative with additional information that can dislodge the other one, like a flank attack instead a head on one. Anecdotally I've seen that work and I've also been guilty of the lazy head on approach and seen it fail.
[1] https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/09/170912134904.h...
[+] [-] gnusty_gnurc|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jb775|5 years ago|reply
Not sure what the best action points would be, but I'm thinking we start by speaking with our companies about redirecting ad-spending away from Google, pausing any active development related to integrating Google products and seek out alternatives, removing/replacing Google analytics (since this is where tons of value is created for Google and allows them to follow users basically everywhere), and seriously talk about unionization next-steps. Thoughts?
[+] [-] MattGaiser|5 years ago|reply
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karol_Sikora
[+] [-] tibbydudeza|5 years ago|reply
The virus is getting "tired" ... really.
Lots of these contrarian "experts" popping up in youtube channels with rather slick production values (wonder who is funding them) about social distancing and lock down policies.
[+] [-] drunkpotato|5 years ago|reply
I have my problems with YouTube, but this isn't censorship, and it isn't a conspiracy to silence anyone. It's an effort to be responsible to public health and safety. The hysteria I see here is completely unwarranted.
[+] [-] s1artibartfast|5 years ago|reply
Two reasonable people can agree on the underlying facts but disagree on policy.
Additionally, this is absolutely censorship and an effort to silence people. It is not an illegal act of censorship. similarly, you can agree that it is legal, but still not like the censorship.
[+] [-] errantmind|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] busymom0|5 years ago|reply
February onwards, WHO did a full 180. But everyone who got censored before then was the victim.
Same thing about effectiveness of wearing masks.
So anyone pointing out the obvious that "China cannot have lesser deaths than Canada" is considered a "misinformation, disinformation and conspiracy theorists" because they "contradict the World Health Organization's official guidelines during an emergency pandemic".
How people don't see the clear danger of such censorship is beyond me. WHO also says China has been transparent.
[+] [-] ksk|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] raspasov|5 years ago|reply
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uk2YZfnsOPg
[+] [-] busymom0|5 years ago|reply
https://twitter.com/ProfKarolSikora/status/12635183523471482...
[+] [-] takeda|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] DanBC|5 years ago|reply
> He estimates 25-30% of the UK population has had Covid-19, and higher in the group that is most susceptible
Here's the Office for National Statistics household survey results. This is only people living in households. (It doesn't include hospital patients, or people living in care or nursing homes).
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthan...
> Our latest estimates indicate that at any given time during the two weeks from 4 May to 17 May 2020, an average of 137,000 people in England had the coronavirus (COVID-19) (95% confidence interval: 85,000 to 208,000). This equates to 0.25% (95% confidence interval: 0.16% to 0.38%) of the population in England. This estimate is based on tests performed on 14,599 people in 7,054 households.
Frustratingly they haven't said yet how many people in total they think have ever had covid-19, but it's not going to be anywhere near 15million people in the UK.
[+] [-] cfmcdonald|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] garyclarke27|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] noelsusman|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] throw7|5 years ago|reply
The first few statements he makes are bit eye-raising and I didn't continue listening but:
"many of the people who died would've died at the exact same time anyway"
I wonder the source or how he knows. He says it so matter of factly that I'm sceptical.
[+] [-] Gravyness|5 years ago|reply