When challenged by an especially persistent journalist at the daily press briefing on July 15 about whether Sydney’s lockdown could be extended for a fourth time, Gladys Berejiklian said she wished she had a crystal ball. While we can’t offer her any fortune-telling clobber like that, there does appear to be a Sydney comedian and TikTok star who may well be the next best thing.
Jon-Bernard Kairouz, who has more than 101,000 followers on his TikTok account @jonbernardk, has predicted with pinpoint accuracy the exact number of new cases reported in the daily press briefings three days in a row. Citing a string of unlikely statistical factors in his videos including “the circumference of Western Sydney”, and “how many households in Fairfield have more than 11 children”, Kairouz ponders a set of baffling equations on a whiteboard before plucking the correct number seemingly out of the air.
@jonbernardk Number Of Cases Tomorrow, Friday 16th Of July ##fyp ##sydneylockdown
♬ original sound - Jon-Bernard Kairouz 🎤
In fact, this social media seer has been so eerily on the money that a journalist even suggested in the media briefing on July 16 that NSW Health must have a leak. All we know is that getting it right once is lucky, twice is a fluke, and three times is eyebrow raising. If he gets it right again, however, we’ll be hitting him for some lotto numbers.
This fortune-telling influencer is the latest in a series of bizarrely comic moments from Sydney's latest lockdown, including the news of a terrifying deer that scared two naked sunbathers so much they got lost in the bush, a man claiming to be "the prime creator of this earth" storming a press conference to serve the police commissioner a Cease and Desist, and the endlessly memeable moment where the state's chief medical officer Kerry Chant's glasses broke mid briefing.