A phone call with Talkback host Kerre McIvor has gone viral after the caller displayed high levels of COVID-19 anxiety mixed with a form of extreme gratitude towards the government and those calculating projections of COVID-19 spread. After McIvor accurately stated that “the modellers have not got a single model right”, the conversation became terse before the talkback host strongly articulated what many in New Zealand have observed from others in the community, that: “I just feel sorry for you that you need a government to look after you”.

McIvor followed up regarding the call with a post on her Facebook page, stating:

“I snapped at a caller this morning. Janine rang in and felt that we should be cautious, that we should keep Auckland in red and told me with Omicron around the corner, we had no idea what might happen next.

We all had to stay safe. And that we should be grateful to Jacinda for looking after us. That’s what tipped me over the edge. I don’t want to be looked after. I have no desire for a government to look after me.

I am a grown arse woman, who has worked since she was 18. I was a single working mum for many years, providing for my daughter (although I had the support and help of her dad and our respective families). I have never been on a benefit (although I’m well aware that an accident or misadventure in my youth might have meant I needed one). I have made many, many mistakes and I am far from perfect – but I own that. I don’t look to the government to tell me what to do or how to live.

I have obeyed all the rules, I’m double vaxxed – but now I’m done.

I’m not going to be cowering at home, fearful of the next variant. Covid has taken two years of my life and I am not letting it take any more. The stories I have heard from people who have suffered so much through this pandemic have moved me to tears so many times – tears I’ve had to cry in ad breaks, news breaks and after work. So many people have done it so terribly tough. And for a woman to tell me that we all should be grateful, that we all need to be frightened of yet another variant – no. I called her a sad, pathetic creature.

I shouldn’t have said creature.

But dear god. To be cowering and grateful …? That, to me, is indeed sad and pathetic. To those who have only read the Herald interpretation of that call and have never listened to my show …? You need context. So your reckons really don’t count.”

Also of note was that the NZ Herald ran an article soon after with the headline titled: Covid-19 Delta outbreak: Kerre McIvor lashes out at listener – ‘Sad pathetic creature’

The article has since been removed.