Alec Hogg’s Inbox: Discovery’s chief actuary cuts through the pandemic confusion

In all the confusion around the pandemic, it was a real joy to interview Discovery's chief actuary Emile Stipp this week. His rational, unemotional assessment – flowing from data – quickly cut through this emotional subject. It generated some interesting feedback, including this email from Ranmore Funds' Sean Peche, who is based in London, who wrote:

Thanks for a spellbinding interview – devoid of emotion and hysteria, just facts and evidence – always the basis for good decisions.

In 2019 the UK's ONS estimated 252,000 UK residents were born in SA. Most of us haven't seen SA based family/friends in two years and are desperate to reconnect. But SA is on the UK Red list meaning upon return we have to spend 10 days in a quarantine hotel next to a Heathrow car park at a cost of £2 250 per person. It's unaffordable, so we wait. 

Now add non-SA partners and UK born children and my guess is 500,000 are ready to travel to SA (1 500 flights carrying 333 passengers) and spend on airport taxes, in shops, restaurants, wine farms, hotels, ubers, car hire and tours. Let's say R5k of spend per person and that's R2.5bn waiting to be spent in SA. Jist by SAFAS.

Now add in the European holiday makers who want to see wildlife but are worried about Kenya, or want beaches but Australia/South America are off limits. 

So with fast action, why can't SA be the Southern Hemisphere tourist destination of choice?

But we need the country off the Red list and a big part of that is higher vaccination rates.

So getting jabbed not only significantly lowers your risk of death, but could also help job creation and job security of fellow South Africans. And all that demand for ZAR might even help your financial health.

Getting jabbed sounds like a good all round "trade" to me. 

Yesterday's response to dogma also received some interesting responses. Here's one from John Richie with the link to a 22-page dissertation. He wrote:

I have just read your article on Dogma and thought you'd enjoy this paper titled "The Tyranny of Dogma" by David Rasnick. It is available for download here:- https://www.davidrasnick.com/ewExternalFiles/The%20Tyranny%20of%20Dogma.pdf

Perhaps you could make the link available to your readers?

And community member Sarah asked me to comment, but then took the words out of my mouth. She wrote:

On Lorelei Hallam's comments… she's 100%. But the worst culprits for this are not Big Tech but the main 'news' sources. Perhaps you could comment on how very few companies control the 'news' these days'? When there are virtually zero mainstream journalists questioning the government and other key matters then the change in dogma is the result. If the mainstream news sources lambasted Big Tech and the Government for their immoral practices on freedoms then we would stand a chance of staying as free as possible. 

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