LOL - You should do more current research on Dr. O'sullivan

Posted on: March 9, 2020 at 11:42:14 CT

At least he's man enough to admit that he f'd it up.


https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/new-zealand/2020/02/coronavirus-lance-o-sullivan-admits-he-got-it-wrong-in-playing-down-fears-says-thousands-could-die-here.html




Last time former New Zealander of the Year Lance O'Sullivan was on The AM Show, he called the media reaction to the growing coronavirus threat "a lot of hysteria, a beat-up".

Now he's fearing COVID-19 could kill thousands of New Zealanders if it comes here, with our health system underprepared for the influx of potentially tens of thousands of patients.

The latest international figures show more than 82,500 people have been confirmed infected and 2810 dead. While the vast majority of cases and fatalities so far have been recorded in China, where it began, the outbreak reached a turning point this week - more new cases are now being reported outside of China than in.

When Dr O'Sullivan appeared on The AM Show at the end of January, the death toll was only 81.

"I am concerned that we're going to get pushed down this track of going crazy on this hysteria, we're going to create these pandemic camps," he told host Duncan Garner. "The real issue is, we've got other, bigger problems that we should be looking at."

Those views, he says, were based on assumptions COVID-19 would sputter out, like SARS, which infected more than 8000 people and killed 774 in 2003 - most of them in China, Hong Kong and Taiwan.

"New Zealand wants leaders who are prepared to say, 'Okay - we got it wrong,'" Dr O'Sullivan said on Friday. "And maybe in this situation we are dealing with something that's a bit more serious than [it seemed] on first appearances... We'd seen SARS, and SARS almost shut down the world, and it turned out to not be very much. So it was with that in mind - let's not do that again."