Dr John Campbell YouTube videos - what happened?

[SchnitzelVonCrummsTum]

Can anyone who's watched his videos more regularly than I have explain this to me? Seems to have gone from mainstream to pro-ivermectin in the space of a few months.

I watched a few of his early videos and found his delivery a little dull to be honest but they were reasonably informative. I was surprised to see that he has jumped fully on the Ivermectin band wagon when I looked again recently. Shant be going back

John Campbell has spent a lot of his career working in developing countries . He has always talked about wondering if there are already cheap out of licence medicines that could help people in poor countries to fight Covid . I don't think you have to be some kind of conspiracy theorist to be suspicious of the motives of Big pharmaceutical companies when it comes to rubbishing cheap already available medicine's.
I've never got the impression that Dr John is totally convinced by Ivermectin , more that he isn't happy about big pharma wanting to shut down any talk that there might already be cheap products that work already out there .

But there are cheap products out there and being used to good effect.

The basic problem with the strange case of ivermectin is that it costs 5 pence per dose, there’s nothing in jt for Pharma.

@hamstersarse

Think we've had this discussion before.

How do you square this claim with the fact that at the start of the pandemic, RCTs were immediately set up to try and identify existing drugs that could be repurposed for treating COVID. Many cheap, off-patent drugs have been subsequently approved for treatment after evidence for efficacy was demonstrated.

There is no robust evidence that ivermectin is effective. No one is trying to block or prevent it's use because of profits. Well powered, well designed trials have been set up to investigate whether it could have a role, with null results demonstrated.

Conversely, plenty of the anti-vax groups are profiting by selling ivermectin at marked up prices, and charging £££ for private consultations. They are doing this for COVID prevention, acute treatment, and for long COVID, despite their being no evidence it has a beneficial effect.

This has been discussed to death on the many ivermectin threads on MN.

e.g., www.mumsnet.com/Talk/coronavirus/4337107-Ivermectin-bonkersness?pg=17

I've never got the impression that Dr John is totally convinced by Ivermectin , more that he isn't happy about big pharma wanting to shut down any talk that there might already be cheap products that work already out there

There has been a huge amount of effort in the last 18 months to identify exisiting drugs that can be repurposed @Roadtripconcept. At the start of the pandemic a short list of candidates was drawn up based on biological rationale and subsuqnetly tested in large scale RCTs.

See trials such as recovery, solidarity, principle. Not sure how you can claim this has been "shut down" when it's a very active area of research and has identified & disproven many candidate treatments.

@XenoBitch

But people are being injured by the vaccine. It seems sinister to insist they have to stay silent, There was a lady on my FB insisting that anyone with any side effect from the vaccine at all should "shut the fuck up" because it might put people off it getting it.

Of course people who’ve been injured by the vaccine have a right to speak up. I went to great lengths myself to avoid AZ and get Moderna because of my own concerns about the proportion of people suffering significant side effects after AZ.

By and large the vaccines are safe. My issue is that Dr John seems to have pivoted to being a platform for vaccine sceptics. I think it’s been driven by his audience. There’s a lot less hits in the general coronavirus news he used to cover.

Covid videos are by policy not monetized so he isn't making money from them directly and he's not shilling a Patreon page or some such like. So I still think he is of good faith if a little stir crazy from working at the coal face for so long.

'The basic problem with the strange case of ivermectin is that it costs 5 pence per dose, there’s nothing in jt for Pharma."

But it's potentially a threat. If it's as effective as some claim, there would be less need for all the vaccines. A solution could be to trash the reputation of the drug while rebranding it and selling it for a massive profit. Just conspiracy though.

Unbelievable that so many are willing to think that “big pharma” could conspire to suppress the antiviral properties of ivermectin while keeping the lid on any leaks when every other organisation on earth has a hard time keeping the lid on even the most trivial gossip.
Not only that, but they do so while dismissing the studies that show it’s an ineffective covid treatment and ignore the many fraudulent studies that actually do look like they are deliberately trying to mislead for whatever reasons they have.

As for Dr John, he’s so invested in the rabbit hole he’s fallen down I don’t he’ll ever back down now. And although his channel may not be monetised, he’s appeared on several TV news shows because of it. I think his ego is leading his actions now.

Blimey, he's going sort of anti-vax now or at least amplifying negative reactions but for what end. That said it has been a necessary part of the vax programme to accentuate the positive for obvious reasons.

Nikk describes her experiences after vaccination and her struggles to be heard, thank you Nikk. This is the link referred to in the discussion, www.c19vaxreactions.com
(C19 vax reactions)

On a separate note, John would like to talk to Eric Clapton, if anyone knows Mr Clapton please pass on this request, [email protected]

I'm afraid with his reach out to Clapton he has officially lost the plot big time. Sad because I had a lot of respect for him as I do for Clapton and Van Morrison. The pandemic has affected us all in different ways for superstars some have taken the conspiracy route. But enough is enough ....

@containsnuts

'The basic problem with the strange case of ivermectin is that it costs 5 pence per dose, there’s nothing in jt for Pharma."

But it's potentially a threat. If it's as effective as some claim, there would be less need for all the vaccines. A solution could be to trash the reputation of the drug while rebranding it and selling it for a massive profit. Just conspiracy though.

See my previous post.

In addition, an anti-viral, no matter how good, would never replace the necessity of vaccinating populations against coronavirus. Hence why we haven't tried this approach for other comparable viruses.

And for the millionth (trillionth?) time, there is no robust evidence ivermectin is effective in treating or preventing COVID, which makes these claims pointless.

A solution could be to trash the reputation of the drug while rebranding it and selling it for a massive profit. Just conspiracy though.
Why repeat if you think it's a conspiracy? Have seen the lengthy fb posts copied to MN regarding a novel anti-viral trialled by Merck which people are trying to claim is actually ivermectin despite the fact it has an entirely different chemical structure.

Surprise surprise on GB News now as someone said up thread his ego has landed.

In addition, an anti-viral, no matter how good, would never replace the necessity of vaccinating populations against coronavirus. Hence why we haven't tried this approach for other comparable viruses.

@ollyollyoxenfree respectfully disagree with this completely.

If there was an effective treatment, I can't see any need at all for a vaccination? Let alone one that only reduces your chances of catching it.

Vaccination doesn't seem to have gotten us out of the mess and at this point (if we're still not on board with 'learning to live with it') the only thing that will is an effective treatment. (Or the virus mutating to be milder).

For the vast majority of people Covid is mild, many don't even have symptoms. So as far as I'm concerned we never needed a vaccine, we needed an effective treatment for those who got seriously ill. Since - for whatever reason - that wasn't possible, we got a vaccine (and 'boosters') for a strain that's practically non-existent. We still need a treatment. I expect that will materialise once the pharmaceutical companies involved have milked multiple governments for all they're worth.

I’ve never watched his videos, but reading these comments it sounds like many of you liked him when he said what you wanted to hear, and now he’s saying things you don’t want to hear you don’t like it.

he is not a medical doctor though, he is a doctor of philosophy

I’ve never watched his videos, but reading these comments it sounds like many of you liked him when he said what you wanted to hear, and now he’s saying things you don’t want to hear you don’t like it.

@Sugarandtime

not really - previously he was making videos on content based on robust evidence, on topics he was qualified to speculate about as a nurse and someone with a phd in nurse education.

Now he has moved onto peddling nonsense with no evidence base - and is disagreeing with those far more qualified who have explained the many issues with the ivermectin literature. His videos are full of basic epidemiological errors.

@ollyollyoxenfree

respectfully disagree with this completely.

If there was an effective treatment, I can't see any need at all for a vaccination? Let alone one that only reduces your chances of catching it. Vaccination doesn't seem to have gotten us out of the mess and at this point (if we're still not on board with 'learning to live with it') the only thing that will is an effective treatment. (Or the virus mutating to be milder).

I cannot stress strongly enough how much vaccination has helped in terms of reducing infections, deaths, long term complications and the emergence of new variants.

This issue we can't see the "counterfactual" (ie a paralell universe where the situation is identical except for no vaccines), and instead people try to compare to pandemic pre-vaccines, and use that as an argument that they haven't made a difference.

An anti-viral could not have replaced vaccines for a multitude of reasons - firstly a magic bullet which prevents 100% of all symptomatic illness is unlikely to ever exist, unmitigated transmission is still problematic, as is isolation of huge numbers of people, and the practilities of identifying and treating 100,000s of people everyday who need early treatment to prevent illness, particularly in countries with poorer access to healthcare.

(and to swing back to the original thread - this is all moot as there is no robust evidence ivermectin is effective in treating or preventing COVID anyway)

Why do you think scientists focussed on developing a vaccine instead of anti-viral at the start of the pandemic? This was a decision made by many many experts, with decades of experience in the field.

But effective treatment would mean there would be less need to vaccinate to this extent - a legal requirement for the entire world population to be repeatedly vaccinated. It could be offered as more of a choice like with other vaccines. Covid is different from other viruses that we vaccinate against because of the huge numbers of people who experience only mild illness or no illness at all.

Why do you think scientists focussed on developing a vaccine instead of anti-viral at the start of the pandemic? This was a decision made by many many experts, with decades of experience in the field.

Because vaccines are given to everyone and a treatment would only be needed for those who are actually ill?

I can't decide if you're some sort of CEO of a giant pharmaceutical company, or just incredibly blinkered.

Do you genuinely believe these 'many many experts' have our best interests at heart and not greed? Of course loads of them do, 'the individual' doing the work probably does, but you can't deny the entire industry has a history of repeatedly prioritising profit over health. I have no idea why you'd think this is any different.

You mention transmission and isolation, but that has only been necessary because people are dying. If people weren't dying...

I can't decide if you're some sort of CEO of a giant pharmaceutical company, or just incredibly blinkered.

Well that descended rather quickly @neversai

I'm neither. I'm an epidemiologist working at a UK university. My only agenda is that policy decisions are driven by evidence based medicine.

I've explained the rationale as to why vaccination is necessary and we cannot reply solely on a (yet to exist) easily accessible anti-viral in the current situation.

We cannot predict who will either become severely ill from coronavirus or who will develop long term complications after what appeared to be a mild infection, in the groups that are generally low risk. "Big pharma" would make a huge amount of money from producing an anti-viral that had to been given to every individual with a positive test, which as we know can happen repeatedly.

Minimising infection & transmission, via vaccination, is how we reduce the likliehood of new variants of concern emerging.

Death is not the only issue to consider but you seem very focussed on it as the only outcome.

Oh I remember now, you’re the ‘epidemiologist’

@hamstersarse

Oh I remember now, you’re the ‘epidemiologist’

Hm?

I think this is the first time you've tried to imply I'm not an epidemiologist, but no skin off my nose if you don't think I'm doing a convincing job ;)

Convenient diversion from questions about why you think ivermectin is unfairly & uncessarily being blocked by "big pharma", despite the fact that trials have been setup to test just this, and that there's been intensive effort (and subsequent approval) to identify existing drugs that could be repositioned.... @hamstersarse

Thank you OllyOlly, awesome job of explaining things in a level headed and eloquent way.

SMH at the “big pharma” conspiracy theorists. The world is a weird place.