Kairouz Falls for the Kevni Trap

Comedian Jon-Bernard Kairouz’s entertaining nightly “predictions” of Sydney’s Covid case count have embarrassed the NSW government for nearly a week.

Jon-Bernard Kairouz, inventor of the unfailingly accurate Kairouz Probability Theorem

But now he’s been busted:

TikTok comedian Jon-Bernard Kairouz has fallen from grace after his five-day streak of correctly reporting NSW’s new Covid cases came to an end.

Kairouz, who claimed “simple maths” was behind his accurate predictions, said there would be 109 new local Covid-19 cases, but only 98 were announced on Monday.

Reports swirled before Monday’s press conference that a “trap” had been set inside NSW Health amid speculation someone was leaking the figures to Kairouz.

The government denies any trap was set. More likely is that Kairouz was brought down by the same ever-reliable strategy that Mark Latham once used to expose Kevin Rudd:

Latham outlines in The Latham Diaries how he suspected Rudd of being the source of numerous damaging leaks before and after the 2004 federal election – “his pompous language is a give-away” – and details a curious trap he set by feeding Rudd false information.

The information, concerning nonexistent focus groups, was prominently reported in [Laurie] Oakes’ Bulletin column the next week.

Latham himself explained in 2010 how he fooled incautious Kevni:

I told him a few things that weren't true about our polling results, wondering if they'd bob up in Oakes's column because Rudd had been feeding stuff to Oakes for some time, in my assessment.

And lo and behold, shortly thereafter, the disinformation, as they call it in the intelligence network – Rudd'd know this, as a spooky sort of character – the disinformation bobs up, word for word, in Oakes's article.

Rudd's the leaker.

It’s an old trick, but a very good one.