Alec Hogg’s Inbox: Covid-19 vaccine debate rages on

Last week’s BizNews Investment Conference, BNIC#2, was a great success. Hopefully the Covid regulations will be adjusted so we are able to open up many more seats for the March event (BNIC#3). We expect to have the dates finalised before month end.

Plenty of response to last week’s comments from BizNews tribe members. Let’s start with my long-time racing industry pal Oscar Foulkes who wrote:

My attitude to the Covid vaccines is somewhat more laidback/pragmatic than most. I think there’s more sanity in the big data informed views of Nate Silver and John Burn-Murdoch, or the super rationality of Sam Harris (this podcast recorded as a PSA is particularly good: https://youtu.be/7jQfNzk_CFk).

Lorraine Loxton invokes Venn diagrams in suggesting that people who are anti the Covid vaccines are not a subset of anti-vaxxers. However, she seems to confuse correlation with causation, in observing that the Delta variant has “appeared in conjunction with the vaccine”. An epidemiologist may have the view that unvaccinated people are perfect hosts for the development of new variants.

She goes on to state that vaccines are causing not just injuries, but deaths as well. And, borrowing from the playbook of conspiracy theorists, suggests that evidence to this effect is being suppressed.

By all means host a debate, but my view would be that both-sideism has negative consequences when an argument can be put forward as fact when there is no evidence to support it.

Regardless of people’s beliefs relating to vaccines, or how to manage Covid, the one thing we can say with certainty is that most people’s grasp of the numbers relating to this (particularly incidence and probability) is very poor. But maybe that is just a reflection of general standards of numeracy.    

Deon Botha-Richards also took exception to Lorraine Loxton’s contribution. Here’s his perspective:

Your musings and commentary from your readers is interesting. It is however, sad that you allow them to make statements that are fundamentally untrue.

For instance Lorraine Loxton says she is not against vaccines in general just the Covid one because it causes harm including deaths. There is no data to back that up. None.

There is much data available from many government agencies such as the CDC, the UK authority and our own government website that tracks vaccines administered and the adverse reactions people suffer as a result. In all cases these are meticulously recorded and reported on. And the evidence is absolutely clear that vaccines cause only mild side effects that people recover from quickly.  Even those that suffer anaphylactic shock are treated immediately and recover fully. And all say it is difficult to conclusively assign blame for the symptoms people experience to the vaccines. And in South Africa as of a few weeks back we had had only 53 deaths of vaccinated people. None caused by the vaccine but rather by Covid and all suffered co-morbidities.

And no authorities are covering it up. That’s a common refrain from anti-vaxxers. All they should do is present evidence. And none will or can beyond make statements like “these vaccines are causing harm and the authorities are covering it up”. They never present any evidence to back that up. I challenge them to even provide a single name of any such person.

As for blood clots what never gets mentioned is that the incidence of blood clots, whilst often being linked to the vaccines, never exceed the normal rate of blood clots among the population generally. Again the data is quite clear on this and those authorities that are supposedly covering up actually publish that data for anyone to interrogate.

To claim the vaccines are harming people is simply false. And to say that one should avoid it because it might have adverse effects completely ignore the sever and very real threat of significant harm from Covid to the unvaccinated. Practically every single person can name at least one person who has died, many who have contracted it and suffered sever effects. None can name a person harmed by the vaccine. None at least where there is proof of direct causation rather than mere speculation or correlation.

I’m not saying you should not give them a platform. But if you do you should link to data that either backs it up or refutes its by providing links and commentary to the truth. Attitude like Lorraine’s is leading to unnecessary death and hardship.

Graham Nelson’s perspective on being taxed on foreign-earned capital gains also received numerous responses. Harvard House director Robin Gibson wrote:

While there’s no reference to Mr Nelson’s investment I assume he is invested in a foreign unit trust of sorts, which for our purposes is considered a foreign equity instrument. This means that he is taxed on his dollar growth converted at the current exchange rate, which is definitely not the same or as punitive as he suggests.

I am completely on the page that our government is pretty useless at most things, but I do struggle as to how intelligent people state as fact many things that they have not taken the time to investigate fully. This gives us a skewed view of reality. That’s what makes your publication so valuable, you don’t just get the “company line”, and you give us quality threads to do our own research. However I guess this is where the opportunities lie!

Another regular correspondent, PSG’s Arnaud Malherbe provided some direct insights in his email which reads:

If he invested the funds directly offshore, ie used his allowance, he will not pay Capital Gains Tax on the devaluation in the Rand. The CGT is calculated on the foreign currency growth alone and then expressed in Rand at the current exchange rate. However, if he invested offshore through Rand denominated feeder funds, the Capital Gains Tax will be calculated on the Rand value, as the funds were never actually converted into a hard currency, but have been reflecting in Rand all along.

Also, the depreciation or appreciation of any currency is influenced by a multitude of factors, most notably the difference in inflation and interest rates between two countries. For South Africa, our currency is mostly influenced by international investor sentiment (whether they invest in emerging markets or not) and happenings in the USA and in China.

To receive BizNews founder Alec Hogg’s Daily Insider every weekday at 6am in your inbox click here. You can also sign up to the weekend’s BizNews Digest for a wrap of the best content BizNews has to offer, for a leisurely Saturday read.

Visited 899 times, 2 visit(s) today