YouTube has yanked down a video produced by Stanford University’s Hoover Institute featuring public health expert Dr. Scott Atlas, M.D., because it “contradicts the World Health Organization or local health authorities’ medical information about COVID-19.”
Dr. Atlas is a physician who received his medical degree from the prestigious University of Chicago School of Medicine, and he serves as a special adviser to the president and also as a member of the White House Coronavirus Task Force. By all accounts, his opinions on the coronavirus, as one of the country’s foremost experts and as an adviser to the president, merit a public airing.
However, YouTube disagrees. Now, when users attempt to load the video — which was first uploaded in June — an error message appears stating that the video has been removed “for violating YouTube’s terms of service.” A further explanation provided by YouTube states that the specific reason this video violates those terms of service is that it “contradicts the World Health Organization or local health authorities’ medical information about COVID-19.”
No further explanation was provided by YouTube about what Dr. Atlas might have said specifically that contradicted the World Health Organization’s advice.
As a refresher, and as just one example of the patent absurdity of censoring a three-month-old video because of the WHO’s current stance on COVID, the WHO insisted that masks were not necessary and should not be worn until June of this year — a position that it now considers to be anathema. If YouTube is censoring videos from June because of what the WHO now says, will it also censor all videos that contain remarks from the WHO about masks prior to June? When and if the WHO changes its position on any aspect of the coronavirus in the future (as it has done in the past), will all videos on YouTube that contain statements that disagree with the WHO’s current position also be censored?
A transcript of Dr. Atlas’ full remarks has been uploaded to the Hoover Institute’s website, and it is clear that in the video, Dr. Atlas did not treat the virus as a hoax, engage in conspiracy theories, or otherwise diminish the seriousness of the pandemic.
He did, however, posit that the costs of the lockdown were outweighing the benefits of the lockdown. The basis thesis of Dr. Atlas’ interview was, “What we would sanely do is consider the impact of what we’re doing as well as the impact of what we’re trying to prevent. Instead, they did two things, they, the policymakers in general. They put in a lockdown. They did [not] care at all, they did not calculate at all the harms of the lockdown, the consequences of the lockdown.”
Among other statements made by Dr. Atlas, he noted:
As conservative policy wonk Avik Roy noted, YouTube did not disclose the credentials of the person who determined that Dr. Atlas’ views on these subjects were incorrect or out of bounds or indicate why they did not merit a public discussion.
Will @YouTube disclose the name of the person (or the person programming the algorithm) responsible? Is he/she/it m… https://t.co/hvLKOFlNaQ— Avik Roy (@Avik Roy)1600025683.0
This content was originally published here.