Alec Hogg: Breaching the Covid-think divide a challenge

Over the past 15 months I've spent many hours listening intently to those on both sides of the Covid-think divide. But it was only yesterday during an interview with Discovery Health CEO Dr Ryan Noach that the penny finally dropped. Have a listen (click here) and you'll hear how Noach prioritises saving lives over all else. Which is rational because he is a trained medical doctor whose sworn priority is to save lives. That puts Noach and others like him on a collision course with those on other side – like actuary Nick Hudson and SA's only living Nobel laureate scientist Prof Michael Levitt (click here). Both argue, equally rationally, that society would be best served by an approach to the pandemic based on a cost-benefit analysis. It's quite a divide. Especially when you overlay the reality that huge debts have been accumulated by the response which will have to be paid by the young – a liability incurred in addressing a disease that kills the old. SA's official life expectancy is 64. After the interview, Noach sent me the graphic (above) plotting ages of Discovery member coronavirus deaths. Their average age, he added, is 65. In the UK, where official life expectancy is 81, the covid mortality age averages 82. Food for thought.

• Another point which Levitt, a Stanford professor, forcefully argued during our May 2020 interview (click here) was that lockdowns actually increased covid deaths rather than saved lives. His point appears to have been proven by the experience of Peru. It imposed the harshest lockdown on earth (see The Economist) and has the world's highest covid mortality rate to show for it (0.5% of the population). Yesterday Peruvians gave a razor thin victory to leftist Pedro Castillo in the runoff presidential election against the daughter of a former dictator. Click here for a superb commentary published on the Carnegie Endowment's website. For context, mortalities in the US and UK are at 0.2% of the population; SA's official number is just under 0.1% (57k deaths on 2019's pop of 58.6m).

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