🔒 Old Mutual exec Andrew McPherson – testing positive, living with Coronavirus

In a refreshingly frank discussion from this week’s Rational Radio, Old Mutual’s Andrew McPherson recounts his movements ahead of contracting coronavirus, and how his life has changed since he tested positive. The head of Balance Sheet Management at the large financial institution strongly supports president Cyril Ramaphosa’s drastic steps to slow down infections, but believes South Africans have taken too long to absorb the seriousness of the disease. Now in self-isolation, McPherson shares some distressing personal experiences since arriving back home from a skiing trip and offers some useful suggestions for a nation that is struggling to separate fake news from fact. – Alec Hogg

You also get people who actually are infected with the virus and we’re going to get hold of one now. It’s Andrew McPherson who’s an executive with Old Mutual. Hello Andrew, I was busy telling David Shapiro about your little story but much better that you tell us the story. Just by way of background, I was looking at my LinkedIn feed Dave, and Andrew did an interview with Bronwyn Nielsen, our colleague.
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He’s on the line to us now. Andrew, why did you decide to talk to Bronwyn about the fact that you do have coronavirus?

It was mainly Bronwyn’s idea because I’m friends with her husband, Ian, and my real concern was just around how unprepared we were for what was coming down the line. I’d been in Europe and I’d been seeing what was happening  in Italy and in Iran. When I arrived in South Africa, there just seemed to be no sense of what we’re about to be hit with and it really concerned me.

How did you pick up the virus?

I don’t know. I travelled from South Africa out of Cape Town via Dubai, to London. I had a meeting in London and then I travelled to Zurich. I went skiing and then I travelled back via Zurich, via Dubai to Cape Town, so you never know when you picked it up. It’s somewhere along that trip.

When did you know that you were infected?

Because there’s been so little information about this, I didn’t know I was infected. I think what made me aware was I worked for Old Mutual and they issued a statement while I was in London that I wasn’t to come back to work for three weeks, which I guess started to raise alarm bells. Seeing everything over there, while we were there, I suddenly got nervous about my parents and I had a slight sore throat but I’d been skiing before and you’re going from hot to cold, but it was very, very mild. I had a very mild sore throat and dry cough but I never thought I was sick. So, when I got back, I thought I’ll go for a test to be 100% sure I’m not carrying the coronavirus and I was completely gobsmacked when I was tested positive.

Where did you test positive?

I tested positive in Cape Town.

At your doctor’s rooms?

No. The problem was that I came back, and I decided that I was going to have a test. At that stage, it was before there were private tests, so the only testing that was being done was when you got permission from the NICD to get a test. Now, I came back from a high-risk area with a sore throat and dry cough, and my doctor said, “Don’t come in tomorrow. Rather let me organise you a test.” So, I waited at home for two days while my doctor begged NICD to give me a test.

My GP has sent out a WhatsApp. Dave, I don’t know if you’ve also been receiving these kinds of things but she said, ‘please, if you’ve got the symptoms (that Andrew’s talking about), don’t come into the surgery because if you do, we’re out for 14 days.’

That’s the biggest risk here and this is where I think we are still behind the curve. Look, since my story came – and I did try and make an effort to get it out there – but I think things have slightly improved. People with coronavirus can’t go to hospitals. If you go into a hospital and this virus gets into a hospital, it can decimate sick people in that hospital. They’re the most at risk. When I went through this process, the thing that scared me was I went to one of the biggest private hospitals in the Cape. My doctor had told them I was coming into the emergency room. They put me in the waiting room with a pregnant woman.

Never.

Yes. That was when I started raising the alarm. I got hold of Alan Winde from the Western Cape. I got hold of the head who was running the Western Cape. I said, “This is crazy, guys. We need to be more on top of it.” But I’ll tell you another scary story. Since I raised the awareness, people have been contacting me and last night, a person I work with called me in a bit of a state because when one of their young relatives had tested positive. That young relative was taken to a doctor. The doctor in Cape Town knew that they were from London and still tested the young child. The child was tested I think on the Friday at a private testing facility. The parents of the child were supposed to fly to Johannesburg on the Saturday and the doctor and the private testing facility said to them, “Yes, you can fly. Take your barcode with you and you’ll get your results in Johannesburg.” They basically said to them, “You might be coronavirus-positive. Get on an airplane. Fly to Johannesburg and we’ll tell you if you’re positive or not.” That’s what’s going on right now.

Surely, after last night and the President’s message , clearly you would have listened to it more carefully than most; that’s going to change.

I’m hoping so. I’m really hoping so. I can honestly say to you that I feel a sense of relief that the President has come out like he has. I commend him for what he’s done. I think it takes a brave leader to do what he’s done but I still think people need to take personal responsibility for this. I’m still seeing Facebook posts where people are saying, “Oh, this is all hype. It’s bullshit”. Excuse my language but it’s crazy that people can still believe that this is hype.

Andrew, how exactly are you feeling now? Maybe, give us some sense of when one gets the virus, what happens?

So, that is the scariest thing. For 85% of us, we’re not going to feel a thing. I feel like I had a very mild cold and I’ve now got a slight aggressive Flu. My joints are sore but for the beginning (and I’m probably not infectious anymore) part of this virus, you’re not even aware that you are sick. Our natural thought is ‘I’m not that sick. I’ll go to work. I’ll go to the shops. I’ll carry on with my life but if I am sick, I’ll stay at home’. By that stage, it’s too late because we’ve infected a whole lot of people.

Would you have gone to work ordinarily, if there was no coronavirus with the symptoms that you had?

Yes, I would have. I probably would have gone to work with it and that’s why I said I’m not trying to put myself on a pedestal and say I’m a model citizen here. I was very lucky that my work instigated this policy and they made me aware of this while I was overseas, otherwise I would have come back and carried on with my life as normal.

How long do you expect that you’re going to be off work, or at least, at home?

So, as I said, I’m working from home. I’m 95% okay. I’ve got sore muscles and I’m quite tired when I get up in the mornings. Your body seems to fight it more when you’re sleeping at nights but I’m working from home. My life is carrying on as normal. But they say that you are sick for about 14 days. When you stop having symptoms i.e. when the Flu-ish feeling is gone, they will come and test again and they’ll test a few days later. If both tests are negative, then you can resume your life.

So, you need to be tested before you can go back into society.

Yes.

But there are 58-million people in South Africa.

Well, that is the problem. I think we need to think about this. The best plan is people taking responsibility for their own actions. From what I read; you are only infectious from the first 7 days… So, you’re infectious from when you get it till 7 days after you start showing symptoms and then you start becoming less and less infectious. Once your symptoms have gone and a few days have passed, you should be relatively safe. I don’t think we have the infrastructure to support testing people who are recovering from this, twice. I don’t know how we’re going to deal with it.

I’m sure that kind of factor is going to start permeating and clearly, there will be a change in that approach but from your perspective, you’re the head of balance sheet management for emerging markets at Old Mutual. That’s a big job and it’s one where you have to apply rationality on a day-to-day basis. When you have a look at the balance sheet of South Africa or the balance sheet of the world with these stock markets… you’ve been as close to coronavirus as anybody else. What are you making of it?

Unfortunately, we don’t have an option. I’ve been doing a bit of reading and thinking while I’ve been at home but maybe, this is a point in time where the world needs to come to a stop and realise that there is more to life than killing ourselves with 40-hr working weeks. Maybe there is more to life than whether the stock market goes up or down and I think that at this point in time, the world needs to realise that we’re actually going to need to stop. We’re going to need to come to a halt to clear the world of this virus. I know it’s easier said than done, but society has to mobilise and realise that right now, the priority has to be clearing the world of this virus and then we can resume economic activity. And the longer it takes the world to realise that, the worse it’s going to be for us. With the outbreak of the SARS virus, they were months away from creating a vaccine. The reality was that the SARS virus was solved and wasn’t an issue anymore, so they put a hold on finishing off the vaccine so that vaccine has been put on ice. If they had just gotten the funding to get that vaccine, that vaccine is probably effective against this virus. So, as you said, it’s the short-sighted thinking of capitalism because there’s no money in it. We’re not going to fund it anymore. So now, we are 12 months behind the curve whereas if they had continued and completed that vaccine, we would probably be fine right now. It’s a lot to think about.

Andrew, just a final question: you did say that you thought President Ramaphosa had done a good thing last night with his reaction – the shutdown of South Africa. Why would you say that?

I think they’re finally taking it seriously. You can pick holes in everyone’s actions and maybe there are some inconsistencies in it, but I think he’s taken a firm stance and it’s a brave stance to take. What I didn’t really agree with was that he praised the actions that we’d taken before this, which I don’t agree with. I think we’re behind the curve but I don’t think that should rest solely on the shoulders of government. That’s on all of us. This virus has been around since November last year and this is the first time that we take it seriously, and that is private sector and individual people. I mean, I went off on a skiing trip in the midst of a global pandemic, which look, it did blow up while we were over there but we went on a skiing holiday. We’ve taken this way too casually and all of us are responsible for it and I think we need to take stock of the fact that we haven’t taken this seriously enough in the past and we need to take it very seriously now if we’re going to rid ourselves of it.