COVID-19 is "not as dramatic as has been made out", The AM Show sports reader Mark Richardson said on Monday, despite the respiratory disease killing more than 430,000 people worldwide.
As Richardson and his co-hosts discussed New Zealand's achievement of effectively eliminating the virus, he said the conversation was starting to "wear thin".
The latest figures from Johns Hopkins University reveal nearly 8 million people have been infected with the SARS-CoV-2 - the virus that causes COVID-19, while 432,000 people have died. New Zealand is one of few countries with no active cases, largely achieved by entering a total lockdown in late March.
"I think we utilised our natural advantages which is our isolation but we are now isolated," Richardson said, adding he didn't believe eliminating the virus through a total lockdown has advantaged the majority of New Zealanders.
Host Duncan Garner noted New Zealand is "miles" ahead of the rest of the world. Australia, which many critics of the lockdown said NZ should have mirrored its response to COVID-19 on, is still recording increases in new infections in some states.
"What it means is we can get back to our businesses and our lives," Garner said.
But Richardson questioned whether New Zealand could have continued to operate as normal to avoid mass job losses. Due to COVID-19, an economist is predicting up to 120,000 Kiwis could end up out of work.
Newsreader Amanda Gillies said more New Zealanders could have lost their lives if a lockdown wasn't implemented to which Ricardson replied, "They would not have".
Gillies pointed to the likes of the US, Brazil, and Italy where collectively nearly 200,000 people have died.
"As a percentage of those people who lose their lives on a yearly basis, I think if you looked at the statistics there, I don't think this is as dramatic as what's been made out," Richardson responded.
When New Zealand was in alert level 3 and still under stringent restrictions, the Opposition and business leaders said the country was staying under a lockdown too long and effectively harming the economy more than it needed to be.
But economist Shamubeel Eaqub told The AM Show earlier this month the economy was starting to show signs that New Zealand's move to lockdown was the right one.
"New Zealand will have a less-interrupted economy than many other parts of the world," he said.
"When we went hard into lockdown, it became very clear that we were prioritising [the] elimination of the disease, which meant you would have a relative opening up.
"There is a really big cost in that upfront locking down, but that's why it came with such a big stimulus - the Reserve Bank went all-out, the Government went all-out.
"Hopefully that means we will reduce the amount of job losses and business failures for now so we can get to some level of normalcy."
