I have many questions rattling around my brain at any point in time. I am generally a curious person who likes to explore and go off on tangents in the search for knowledge and hopefully some wisdom. I would like to share three questions with you without necessarily answering these. If you have answers or comments, please share these on the blog post.

  1. Why is it that stock markets are so volatile?
  2. Why do South African citizens vote for the ANC?
  3. What is this asymptomatic transmission of SARS-CoV-2 all about?

Ok, let’s dive straight into the first question.

1. Why is it that stock markets are so volatile?

Stock markets, whether it be in Johannesburg or the USA, are incredibly volatile. Refer below for the annual movement in the S&P 500 index (the weighted stock market index of the largest 500 listed companies on all stock exchanges in the USA) over the period 1970 to the end of 2020. The average annual increase in the S&P 500 over the aforementioned period was 8.9%.

Some of you may not recall stock market movements in the 1970s, 1980s or even in the 1990s. 19 October 1987, sometimes referred to as ‘Black Monday’, was a day to remember. The S&P500 index dropped 20.5% in one day based on no new information in the markets. It was a panic attack of note. The S&P500 took strain in 2000, 2001 and 2002 declining by 10.1%, 13.0% and 23.4% respectively in these years. These were the years post the Dotcom bubble when most market pundits thought the world would fundamentally change due to the internet. Any company which had any remote possibility of doing business via the internet received ridiculous valuations. You may recall what happened in 2008 when the titans of Wall Street were caught with their pants down after packaging and selling subprime mortgage debt. Remarkably, 2020 was a good year on the S&P500 with the index rising 16.3% despite the mayhem caused by COVID-19 lockdowns. John Maynard Keynes famously said “…markets can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent…”.

2. Why do South African citizens vote for the ANC?

Believe or not, Eskom had surplus electricity generation capacity in 1994. Now we are regularly load-shedded. South Africa’s public healthcare and education systems are broken. A fire at the Charlotte Maxeke hospital in Johannesburg in April 2021 resulted in a mass evacuation of its patients and staff. As of today, its 1,088 beds remain unoccupied in the midst of a pandemic. The Helen Joseph hospital in Auckland Park has had severe water shortages over the past week thanks to Joburg Water’s troubles at a nearby reservoir. Imagine a hospital without water? That means no surgeries, no flushing toilets, a germ fest and very thirsty patients.

South Africa’s public education system is dysfunctional. 78% of our grade 4 pupils cannot read for meaning per a recent international survey. Our unemployment rate amongst 15 to 24 year olds is 74%. Amongst all adults of working age, it is 42.6%, the worst in the world. Service delivery at municipal level is horrendous. Only 20 out of 257 municipalities nationally received an unqualified (without findings) audit reports from the Attorney General. The North West and Free State provinces had no unqualified audit reports at municipal level. KwaZulu-Natal only had 1 municipality receive an unqualified report out of 54 municipalities. The Attorney General reported that irregular expenditure at municipality level was R54 billion in 2019/2020. Shocking. Welcome to cadre deployment.

So why would any sane person vote for a political party that is fundamentally corrupt and unable to deliver basic services for the population in South Africa? Some of these ANC appointed public office bearers and their cronies, cousins, wives/husbands and friends are under investigation for COVID-19 PPE corruption amounting to R14 billion per the Special Investigating Unit. They just can’t stop themselves.

3. What is this asymptomatic transmission of SARS-CoV-2 all about?

There has been much debate about the reliability of PCR tests for SARS-CoV-2 and the ability of those who have tested positive to transmit the virus to others. Of those who test positive, some will develop COVID-19 (the disease) and display symptoms and others will have no symptoms (asymptomatic). Like with flu, it would make intuitive sense that symptomatic persons who have COVID-19 can spread the virus to others. Whether asymptomatic persons, who have returned a positive test for SARS-CoV-2, can spread the virus is less clear. Some esteemed scientists say categorically that asymptomatic spread is a major driver of COVID-19 infections. Others acknowledge that asymptomatic spread could occur but opine that it is highly unlikely to be a key driver in transmission of the virus. Even the World Health Organisation (WHO) is confused. On 8 June 2002, Dr Maria van Kerkhove, a senior WHO official, stated “…from the data we have, it still seems rare that a asymptomatic person actually transmits onwards to a secondary person…”. A day later she retracted her statements and indicated there was much that is unknown with regards to asymptomatic coronavirus spread. The WHO on its website in July 2020 stated that “…Yes, infected people can transmit the virus when they have symptoms and when they don’t have symptoms…”. All quite confusing really.

My question is how do scientists reach conclusions on symptomatic and asymptomatic transmission? If it was a controlled experiment in an old age home that was quarantined (all persons including care providers), it may be possible to track the transmission of the virus from symptomatic persons to others within the facility. However, if care providers are interacting with the outside world, how do you definitively know who infected who? This is particularly relevant if asymptomatic transmission occurs. Any number of people could have infected numerous others.

The question of asymptomatic transmission is of critical importance to public healthcare measures with regards to COVID-19. If asymptomatic transmission is rare then there would be no need for lockdowns and school closures. If asymptomatic transmission is a key driver of the virus spread, we are in a world of pain (health wise, economically and mentally).

I am comforted by two findings:

  • A research report “Household transmission of SARS-CoV-2; a systematic review and meta-analysis; Z. Madewell; Y. Yang and I. Longini” published in the Journal of the American Medical Association on 14 December 2020. The research covered 54 studies involving 77,758 participants and concluded that household secondary attack rates for symptomatic cases was 18.0% versus 0.7% for asymptomatic cases.
  • A report by Dr John Ioannidis, a professor at Stanford University, in the Bulletin of the WHO published on 14 October 2020, that concluded that the median infection fatality rate in 51 different locations globally from COVID-19 was 0.23%. He further stated “…COVID-19 has a very steep age gradient for risk of death…and in some cases most, deaths occurred in nursing homes…the infection fatality rate would still be low among non-elderly, non-debilitated people…”.

All the best from BeechieB. Be safe and do not fear too much.