YouTube: We'll Be The Judge Of That

In these times of Covid-19 trouble it’s nice to know that YouTube is there to protect us from subversive information. The omnipotent video-sharing service, a branch of the Google empire, has taken down a video from two California doctors who had the temerity to poke holes in the logic of Lockdown Inc.

Where the doctors produced data that showed death rates at a fraction of the advertised numbers, YouTube saw insurrection that would not be permitted on its platform. And so, buh-bye doctors, thereby insuring that everyone now wants to see the video. (The video lives on here )

YouTube’s issue was not specifically with the content-- the doctors, after all, were largely quoting from public documents and data available freely on the web. No, the Thought Police at YouTube took umbrage at aspersions on the lockdown rules in the state (and elsewhere). Specifically, YouTube executive Susan Wojkicki was pissed that anyone would challenge the omnipotence of the World Health Organization, which has, frankly, been hitting below the Mendoza Line on its guidance for Covid.

The idea that there might be a countervailing theory of Covid-19’s lethality has become, to the architects of the Lockdown Inc. and their petrified subjects, some sort of fifth-column threat to nations such as Canada, which has been the WHO’s errand boy on Covid policy. CBC Radio produced a story about a Canada Post letter carrier (voice distorted) decrying that he has to deliver an Epoch Times newsletter that castigates China— and by association the WHO. You’d have thought he was placing microfilm in pumpkins with Whitaker Chambers during the 1950s Red Scare.

As my mentors in broadcasting used to tell me, headwinds mean you’re getting close to the target (this was before they took slush funds from the Liberals to disseminate party policy). In my own experience doing unpopular investigative pieces, I received a death threat, was ostracized by many colleagues and saw my parentage colourfully derided in my mail. It meant, keep going. And this was before social media.

Alex Berenson doesn’t have that luxury. He’s a former New York Times reporter, whose book Tell Your Children: The Truth About Marijuana, made heads explode in the pro-weed community when he attributed negative properties to the hippie’s best friend. His latest attempt at making friends and influencing neighbours is as a contrarian on Twitter over the accepted wisdom of Lockdown Inc.

At about the time in March that nations around the world chose lockdown over herd immunity (allowing the virus to spread quickly to create a broader immunity in the population) Berenson developed a Twitter following for identifying gaps between the models offered by mainstream doctors such as Anthony Fauci or Theresa Tam and the data produced locally in communities. 

Specifically, when Donald Trump was talking about deaths in the millions or hundreds of thousands at the peak of the infection from the modelling, Berenson discovered from public sources that the gap between the models and real numbers showed that hospitalizations were absurdly below the estimates that had been predicted to crush the health care system (and justify Lockdown Inc.). If deaths trailed hospitalizations by a lag of 2-3 weeks, then lower hospitalizations predicted that the Plague scenario used to lock down society might be highly unrealistic.

Berenson decided to concentrate on hospitalizations as a barometer of the Covid spread. Coincidentally (or not) the models suddenly began shifting drastically downward. Now, modelling is imperfect, an estimate of probabilities. But the numbers from models were being promoted by the WHO and governments around the world to cow people into surrendering their civil rights by self isolating. So they are fair game.

This led Berenson to research from Europe and individual states that showed the infection rate in the population was likely much higher than realized, much of it asymptomatic or mild infections in people under 50. In other words, the lockdown has done little to halt the spread; mostly it had gone inside families and tight groups. Advertised death rates of 3 or 4 percent are likely half of one percent. (This downgrading of the fear factor is what got the California doctors in trouble with YouTube.)

Calling the Lockdown culture the Department of Pandemic, Berenson has concluded, “It is now clear that the lockdowns were a major mistake everywhere except the New York City metro area, and possibly even there.”

He also drew ire for pointing to virtually zero Covid deaths in healthy children and, to be honest, any healthy people under 50. Irresponsible and heartless were the kinder characterizations for his contempt for locking up children at home. (He noted Quebec’s move this week to re-open K-6 schools while other provinces quiver in fear at being labelled child killers by CBC. Ontario’s health guru, Dr. Janet McReady, blocked him the impertinence of asking why 252 Covid patients justifies locking up the 14-million-plus other Ontarians.)

Berenson avoids the medical bun fights. “I am very careful to avoid giving specific medical advice… It’s not my place and I have enough else to discuss anyway.” For him it’s in the numbers— such as the shifting of the health-care burden from hospitals that sit half-idle because the non-existent “Wave” of Covid to all those losing their treatments for other illnesses. “Incredible data from Oregon suggesting much of the recent rise in all-cause mortality is lockdown rather than #Covid related— that people may simply be dying at home because they are too frightened to go to hospitals and failing to get medical treatment for other conditions”

Needless to say establishment medicine and its constituents are less than appreciative of his conclusions. His twitter account (he has about 90K followers) is laced with condescension and abuse. His latest battles are with the Gotcha media and their “not enough testing” jabs at Trump. “The testing centers are empty, and anyone who wants a test and has any reason to have one, can. The hospitals are half-empty and going broke. The testing fetish is so obviously a way to delay reopening it barely requires further discussion.”

Berenson is quick to correct his mistakes in his postings. But he’s unsparing about the complicity of his colleagues, who refuse to back down in the face of new evidence. “Without question it is the single biggest media failure ever. Nothing else is even close… The reason is that the media didn't merely fail to report the truth, it pushed the panic and actually drove government policy… But in this case— for reasons both complicated and simple— the media played the tune and ‘policymakers’ danced.”

So the pushback continues from Lockdown Inc. and those who see Covid-19 as an excuse to obliterate civil liberties and free speech. When the virus passes they’ll then begin sanitizing the history of how they panicked and got it wrong. Because, let’s face it, them being right is what this whole panic was all about.

Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster He’s also a regular contributor to Sirius XM Canada Talks Ch. 167. A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada's top television sports broadcaster, he is also the best-selling author of Cap In Hand which is available on BruceDowbigginBooks.ca