@Staffy1
She is not just a GP, she’s also the chairperson of the South African Medical Association.
The South African Medical Association is like a medical trade union. It might qualify her as an expert in employment issues but not in epidemiology or virology.
Besides which, she is not speaking to the press on behalf of the South African Medical Association, she is speaking as an individual.
Interestingly, if you look at what she writes in their newsletter as their chair, she says something very different. In the 10 December newsletter, she says that it is too early to understand the significance of the mutations in omicron or make predictions. Which is exactly what people are criticising her for doing here. She clearly understands as you would bloody well hope from a doctor that we don't have enough data to be drawing conclusions or making predictions yet here she is spouting irresponsible nonsense about omicron being mild to the UK media and saying we are overreacting while she is telling her colleagues to get vaccinated and being far more cautious about what she says.
The detection of the new Omicron variant again emphasizes the urgency to get vaccinated. The more people we have vaccinated, the less chance the virus has of mutating. Early signs from diagnostic laboratories that B.1.1.529 has rapidly increased in Gauteng and may already be present in most provinces. We can make some predictions about the impact of mutations in this variant, but the full significance remains uncertain. We will keep an eye on this during the next few weeks and months
www.samedical.org/cmsuploader/
On 15 December, she again urges members to get their booster vaccinations in her address. There's nothing else about omicron.