2020-03-11_-_Thoughts_on_Coronavirus_Events
00:00:00.000 | Well, ladies and gentlemen, exciting times to be alive.
00:00:03.960 | It's getting real.
00:00:04.960 | Welcome to Radical Personal Finance, a show dedicated to helping you live a rich and meaningful
00:00:09.440 | life now while building a plan for financial freedom in 10 years or less, although lately
00:00:14.880 | it's kind of turned into COVID central around here.
00:00:19.680 | Hope you'll just stick with me.
00:00:21.080 | I've actually tried three times in the last couple of days to record a couple of the shows
00:00:27.120 | and for a variety of reasons I have not been able to get it done.
00:00:30.880 | I've been traveling this week.
00:00:32.080 | I'm in Louisville, Kentucky.
00:00:33.600 | Had a great meetup with a bunch of listeners last night and anyway, I sat down and did
00:00:38.800 | a couple of shows and I got several times into it.
00:00:42.280 | I just couldn't get it done.
00:00:43.280 | But this evening I felt like I got to turn the mic on.
00:00:45.920 | So it's late at night here on Wednesday, March 11, 2020 and it's been a momentous day and
00:00:51.600 | a momentous evening in the news of the day.
00:00:56.240 | And so I wanted to just to get on the microphone, share with you a few ideas specifically about
00:01:01.360 | the flu pandemic, the emerging COVID-19 pandemic.
00:01:06.240 | It's going to get worse before it gets better, but I'm going to try to give you some positive
00:01:10.800 | things to think about.
00:01:12.920 | And then I'll try to give you just a few ideas on economics, but I will continue to talk
00:01:17.980 | about some other things.
00:01:19.600 | Certainly things are being affected left, right and center all over the place.
00:01:24.440 | So let's begin.
00:01:25.440 | The news is coming fast at the moment.
00:01:27.720 | This evening, President Trump announced that the United States is, in addition to banning
00:01:32.360 | travel from, let's see, what is it?
00:01:34.280 | South Korea and China, the United States is banning travelers from Europe, except the
00:01:39.720 | United Kingdom for the next 30 days.
00:01:42.280 | That's a significant development.
00:01:44.000 | Evidently, Tom Hanks and his wife have been diagnosed with COVID-19.
00:01:50.200 | Just this evening, the NBA canceled the season.
00:01:54.960 | I pulled up a little clip on YouTube of there was a game with the Jazz and some of the team
00:02:02.160 | getting ready to start and all of a sudden right at the beginning, all the officials
00:02:05.680 | are talking to one another and they canceled the game right before tip off.
00:02:10.520 | Harvard University canceling all classes.
00:02:12.600 | All classes are now going online.
00:02:14.880 | The stock market down again majorly today.
00:02:17.880 | Stocks are, I think, officially in bear territory now, in a bear market.
00:02:22.360 | And so that's a significant development.
00:02:26.280 | And it seems like, I'll just tell you, just getting started, but it seems like the pace
00:02:30.480 | of change is just coming in constantly.
00:02:33.820 | New headlines frequently.
00:02:34.820 | I've got, I sit in a hotel room, I've got Bloomberg Business on right now watching the
00:02:39.980 | headlines come in minute after minute from all around the world.
00:02:43.680 | And certainly, these are, it's one of those crisis periods where things are happening.
00:02:48.720 | People's browsing around the social networks a little bit and it seems like there's a great
00:02:52.920 | toilet paper shortage.
00:02:54.200 | So that's a very significant need for a lot of people.
00:02:57.840 | So it is remarkable just to see how fast things are changing.
00:03:01.360 | Even I was thinking about politically.
00:03:03.000 | I don't know if there has been ever any, I don't know if there's ever been political
00:03:14.280 | conditions that have been changing so quickly as they are, at least in presidential politics.
00:03:20.760 | Senator Joe Biden was running for president a few weeks ago.
00:03:23.720 | It looked like his campaign was completely on life support.
00:03:26.240 | And I was feeling pretty confident that Senator Sanders would be the Democratic nominee for
00:03:31.920 | president and all of a sudden, two weeks, just bam, bam, bam, and everything changes.
00:03:37.260 | So there's a lot of things happening very, very quickly.
00:03:41.960 | And so I think we can expect that trend to continue.
00:03:46.480 | But let's talk briefly.
00:03:47.800 | I'll just give you my insight on the disease.
00:03:50.040 | I've been talking about it for a while.
00:03:51.880 | So I released last week an optimistic, fairly optimistic sounding show.
00:03:57.800 | I continue to maintain that optimism just simply because of what I think the data is
00:04:05.760 | demonstrating that this particular virus is probably not going to have quite the death
00:04:11.880 | toll that I was worried that it would have.
00:04:17.600 | And I'm also increasingly optimistic to see, although late, too late, I'm increasingly
00:04:23.680 | optimistic to see many people responding to the threat.
00:04:28.840 | One of the things that's been so interesting to watch in China as the original, as COVID-19
00:04:34.080 | started to develop in China, it's been so fascinating to watch how they've been able
00:04:40.160 | to successfully contain the virus through drastic measures.
00:04:44.960 | Now those measures were certainly very costly to China, but they were also effective and
00:04:50.440 | they stopped the spread of it.
00:04:52.000 | And I think you see right now, Italy can totally shut down except for I think pharmacies and
00:04:56.480 | grocery stores.
00:04:57.480 | And I hope that that would stop the spread there.
00:05:00.720 | The reality is we know how to stop the spread of a flu virus.
00:05:07.680 | You stop basically all person to person contact.
00:05:11.480 | That is effective and that slows the spread and stops the spread sufficient to get ahead
00:05:17.140 | of it and to give time for the hospital system to absorb the people who need help.
00:05:24.360 | And so that's a really important component of it.
00:05:27.280 | And so I'm optimistic about that.
00:05:29.320 | I'm also very grateful that young people, children especially, seem to be shared.
00:05:35.720 | I guess that's probably, I think we all share a love for children and a desire to see children
00:05:41.280 | protected.
00:05:42.600 | But as a father of four young children, I'm grateful for that.
00:05:46.880 | Now of course the virus continues to be very harmful for older people and for people with
00:05:52.000 | underlying health conditions.
00:05:53.600 | So we need to be cautious.
00:05:55.960 | But I think that I continue to be optimistic that the physical condition is not as bad
00:06:02.360 | as I previously feared.
00:06:03.360 | It's not to say that tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of people around the world may
00:06:07.900 | not die, but it's not going to be as bad as I previously feared.
00:06:13.660 | Now there are a couple bits of data that are kind of against that thesis.
00:06:19.640 | The thing that I have found most concerning was a piece that I read yesterday and shared,
00:06:28.320 | I sent it to all my consulting clients.
00:06:31.960 | And the headline here comes from the South China Morning Post.
00:06:34.760 | The headline is, "Coronavirus can travel twice as far as the official safe distance and stay
00:06:40.420 | in the air for 30 minutes, Chinese study finds."
00:06:44.340 | What happened was some Chinese epidemiologists were studying a couple of cases in China and
00:06:51.580 | they were able to isolate some people who had contracted the disease on a bus from another
00:06:57.220 | person.
00:06:58.740 | And they found, it was a long distance coach bus where one person who was infected got
00:07:04.740 | onto a bus and sat down in the second row from the back.
00:07:08.300 | Now in China all of the long distance buses have CCTV cameras on them and so the researchers
00:07:15.900 | were able to see exactly where the person sat and they were able to see exactly how
00:07:23.260 | the interaction played out between that person and other members.
00:07:27.300 | And what they found was the infected person passed the infection on the bus to somebody
00:07:35.760 | who was four and a half meters away.
00:07:38.820 | That was the closest they got, four and a half meters away.
00:07:46.180 | That's to me pretty stunning and that's very concerning.
00:07:50.820 | What they also found is 30 minutes later somebody came onto the bus and after the original infected
00:08:01.180 | person left, 30 minutes later a passenger came on and was infected.
00:08:08.140 | And this just shows how infectious the disease is, just passing through small particles in
00:08:15.900 | the air from one person to another.
00:08:19.340 | That's very, very concerning.
00:08:21.460 | That's a really concerning piece.
00:08:24.220 | Then a listener, as I was talking about that online, a listener shared with me an article
00:08:27.460 | about a lawyer in New York City who infected about 50 people and I was reading, started
00:08:36.340 | to read more and was reading about somebody in Korea, a super spreader as they're known,
00:08:48.020 | who actually succeeded in passing the virus to thousands of people.
00:08:51.740 | It's a person, individual known as patient 31.
00:08:55.400 | So it's very, very infectious.
00:09:00.300 | Now it's still, it can be defeated and so the strategy is social distancing, staying
00:09:06.300 | away from people, staying home and stopping and slowing the spread.
00:09:10.980 | And that strategy is important because it may protect you from getting infected and
00:09:17.060 | in addition to that important goal it has the benefit of slowing down the spread of
00:09:23.380 | the disease so that you can have fewer people sick at one time which gives the medical system
00:09:29.220 | more of an opportunity to stay up to date, to stay current with people who are sick.
00:09:38.620 | So in a moment I'll talk about kind of what you can do and I think one of the key things
00:09:44.020 | is as far as I'm concerned it is definitely time to be distancing yourself from people,
00:09:50.700 | from crowds and bringing your movements and contact with people to the bare minimum.
00:09:57.100 | Easier for some people than others but certainly possible.
00:10:01.220 | Now let's talk about the economics of the situation.
00:10:03.980 | I continue to think that this very clearly is going to cause major and long-term economic
00:10:13.380 | disruptions.
00:10:15.020 | The very best case I can see for the economic effects of this virus is simply devastating.
00:10:25.500 | I consider devastating to be the bare minimum and we'll see where we're going to go from
00:10:31.140 | there.
00:10:32.140 | But I want you to think about and to understand a little bit about why I consider this to
00:10:38.900 | be fairly certain at this point.
00:10:40.560 | Why are stock markets down?
00:10:42.820 | Are stock markets down just because people are scared?
00:10:45.620 | No, stock markets are down for of course millions of reasons for all the individuals in it but
00:10:51.660 | because companies are going to be making a lot less money in days to come and that's
00:10:57.660 | big due to the only workable way to control this crisis which is to shut everything down.
00:11:08.060 | But think about how widespread this is.
00:11:12.860 | Again this is why the reason a virus is so horrific and so bad is the
00:11:27.180 | changes needed happen everywhere all at once.
00:11:30.540 | If you have a local tornado, it happens in your town but in the virus you can see it
00:11:34.420 | is absolutely global.
00:11:36.540 | So everything, everywhere is getting shut down all at once.
00:11:40.740 | Yes, there are some countries that have been ahead of the curve in Asia and now in Europe
00:11:46.100 | ahead of the curve and the Americas are now starting to catch up but still practically
00:11:51.380 | speaking over a period of weeks where everything is shut down together over this period of
00:11:57.100 | weeks.
00:11:58.100 | So everything gets shut down.
00:12:00.420 | Everyone stays home and this happens simultaneously in every country, every state, every county,
00:12:05.700 | every family and this has a tremendous ripple effect.
00:12:09.300 | I want you just to imagine the businesses that are hurt by this and the revenues that
00:12:14.460 | are lost by this.
00:12:15.860 | I think the NBA is a good example since it was just tonight announced that the NBA is
00:12:20.740 | suspending the season.
00:12:22.740 | First think about the lost ticket revenue that was previously scheduled to be coming
00:12:28.100 | in to all of those franchises based upon their games.
00:12:34.720 | Think about the lost TV revenue that all of the TV stations previously had committed.
00:12:41.500 | What are the NBA, there's probably an NBA network on cable TV, what are they going to
00:12:44.580 | do now that the season is canceled?
00:12:47.140 | What about all of the NBA games that were previously scheduled to be booked on TV?
00:12:54.820 | What are the TV channels going to fill that time with?
00:12:57.500 | Think about all of the ad revenue that's lost by those TV channels for not having those
00:13:02.460 | games.
00:13:03.460 | Think about all the revenue that's lost for the franchises by not being able to sell the
00:13:06.580 | TV rights to those games.
00:13:08.940 | Think about then all of the probably the advertisers themselves who are going to have less money
00:13:14.500 | because they can't buy the advertising.
00:13:17.040 | Think about the vendors and the concessions revenue that won't be gained by all the people
00:13:21.320 | working at the NBA games.
00:13:25.160 | Think about all of the hotel revenue that'll be lost by all the travelers that were previously
00:13:32.120 | part of the NBA system.
00:13:34.480 | Now that's not a big hotel driver, I'm thinking of other events, conventions, etc.
00:13:39.440 | But think about all of the Uber revenue and the taxi revenue that's going to be lost because
00:13:43.960 | those games aren't going to happen.
00:13:45.720 | Think about all of the restaurant tabs and the bar tabs that are not going to be generated
00:13:51.880 | because of those NBA games and how that's going to hurt all of the bartenders and the
00:13:57.360 | servers and the restaurants and the restaurateurs.
00:14:00.560 | It just goes on and on and on and that's just one example of a huge example but that's just
00:14:04.840 | one industry, the NBA.
00:14:06.800 | Now take that out to March Madness, take that out to the rodeo in the Houston rodeo or the
00:14:13.480 | Texas rodeo just canceled.
00:14:15.560 | It's going to go to other things, NASCAR games and everything.
00:14:20.100 | Think about the just the widespread disruption for months going forward and how across the
00:14:26.440 | board you have this domino effect where these cancellations just ripple outward, less money
00:14:35.240 | to spend and the money starts to freeze up.
00:14:38.280 | And it's not that the money disappears, it's just that it starts to freeze up and that
00:14:43.040 | has a devastating effect to people who are in those affected industries.
00:14:48.560 | So at the bare minimum this is going to be devastating and then could it be worse than
00:14:55.480 | devastating?
00:14:57.600 | Time will tell, right?
00:14:59.280 | It'll depend on how long these measures take place, it'll depend on what happens in the
00:15:07.640 | psychology of the people, etc.
00:15:09.800 | Pay also attention to what we're experiencing.
00:15:12.280 | We're starting to experience the kind of the contagion of panic so to speak.
00:15:19.720 | The news that I thought was really interesting here this evening was the news about Tom Hanks
00:15:25.720 | because when you have a widely loved person who has a great degree of notoriety, you wind
00:15:38.160 | up with a situation and they get sick, you wind up with a situation where people start
00:15:41.520 | to pay attention.
00:15:42.920 | And I think you start to see that with the runs on toilet paper, the runs on soap, the
00:15:49.760 | runs on all this stuff.
00:15:52.160 | So you're starting to see the kind of the contagion spread, the contagion of panic where
00:15:57.640 | nobody wants to be the last one shopping for toilet paper.
00:16:01.800 | And you're starting to see the emotions come in where the system is breaking down where
00:16:06.680 | previously – let's use toilet paper as the example today because it's a really good example
00:16:10.480 | – maybe most people would go and buy toilet paper and they would say, "I'll just go
00:16:16.520 | ahead and get one thing of toilet paper because that's the normal amount that they shop,
00:16:21.040 | one big package."
00:16:22.360 | But then all of a sudden they find out that toilet paper is in short supply and so they
00:16:25.880 | go to the store and they figure, "I'll get two instead of one."
00:16:28.880 | And so the supplies start to get low and then that news starts to spread and today it spreads
00:16:32.760 | faster than ever before because any individual can produce that news among their community.
00:16:39.000 | And so more and more people run out to the store to go and get more toilet paper.
00:16:43.000 | And then the stores start rationing toilet paper to try to maintain it and so they say,
00:16:48.600 | "Maximum one per customer, maximum five per customer."
00:16:51.120 | Costco has been rationing products for the last few days, many different products.
00:16:55.520 | And so then people – that just spreads further and then people say, "Well, I've got to get
00:16:59.480 | around the rationing."
00:17:00.480 | And so they start going to multiple stores so they can get past and it just gets worse
00:17:03.360 | and worse and worse.
00:17:04.640 | And so the supply chain just totally breaks down because of the just-in-time inventory
00:17:09.640 | systems under which the supply chain is run.
00:17:12.660 | It works fine and it has a little bit of flexibility but not a lot.
00:17:17.500 | And so it can be disrupted very easily by unforeseen circumstances.
00:17:23.880 | Similar example would be the mask crisis where healthcare providers are having a hard time
00:17:28.400 | getting a hold of masks and they're just not out there.
00:17:31.760 | And so you see how the supply chain works fine during normal times but unless you stockpile
00:17:37.280 | the stuff and unless it was stockpiled by organizations, by governments, etc., by hospitals,
00:17:44.600 | then the things fall apart and because of the excess demand all of a sudden.
00:17:50.400 | Now that's not a permanent condition.
00:17:52.760 | Eventually people say, "All right, I've got enough toilet paper for okay.
00:17:55.640 | I'm not going to die if I don't have 10 packs of toilet paper.
00:17:58.320 | Three or four is fine."
00:17:59.800 | So they stop buying and then that gives time for the system to be replenished, etc.
00:18:04.760 | And then there winds up being a toilet paper oversupply because everyone has enough to
00:18:09.200 | last them for months and most people aren't going to stock it and keep it stocked up in
00:18:13.080 | their house because they just don't want to have the stuff sitting around.
00:18:16.040 | And so the store shelves get full again and then the revenues go way down.
00:18:21.840 | So you can just watch it breaking down right now, right in front of your face.
00:18:27.880 | And you can see how years ago I did a study on why price gouging laws are so destructive
00:18:35.000 | and I believe immoral.
00:18:38.000 | They're not a moral use of the law.
00:18:39.680 | Now I'm not going to get all bent out of shape about that and jump up and down on my soap
00:18:43.040 | box but they're at least destructive.
00:18:44.240 | You can see how stupid they are because what they do is you wind up, if you don't allow
00:18:49.320 | the pricing system to react, then the stores wind up regulating demand by rationing.
00:18:56.520 | You can either ration based on price or you can ration based on person.
00:19:00.360 | And since it's generally not, it's considered a bad business, which I support, it is bad
00:19:06.160 | business to do, but it's also considered to be illegal in many places to raise prices
00:19:10.720 | to respond to demand.
00:19:12.200 | What happens is the demand quickly outstrips the supply and strips the supply from the
00:19:16.600 | shelves and then you wind up with shortages.
00:19:20.400 | And if you're frustrated right now that you can't find toilet paper and you're not sure
00:19:23.760 | what you're going to do in the coming days when you don't have any toilet paper, well,
00:19:28.360 | consider that next time you start proposing for price gouging laws that result in you're
00:19:32.560 | not having toilet paper.
00:19:34.160 | You'd probably rather have gone and paid a $20 for a little four pack of toilet paper,
00:19:39.480 | which would be an extremely high price, but at least you'd have a little bit instead of
00:19:43.920 | not having any available simply because all the store shelves were stripped bare.
00:19:49.760 | And if you were willing to pay $20 for some toilet paper, all of a sudden some of those
00:19:53.960 | people who bought three big cases of it might be willing to spread it out.
00:19:59.200 | You know, if I bought three big cases at the standard price of $10 for a case, I'd be happy
00:20:03.480 | to sell some of mine for $20.
00:20:05.920 | And so maybe there'll be a black market in toilet paper.
00:20:08.280 | Let me know if you're seeing that.
00:20:10.400 | But that's just how economic systems work.
00:20:12.720 | So notice, please, I don't like to say I told you so.
00:20:16.520 | I really would like to be wrong on some of this stuff because it really stinks and I
00:20:21.480 | don't like to gloat.
00:20:23.120 | But notice, how can you protect yourself?
00:20:26.600 | How should you have protected yourself from this?
00:20:30.400 | The answer is simply by stockpiling the things that you would need.
00:20:34.840 | Throughout the entire history of radical personal finance, I've emphasized this to you.
00:20:39.540 | You don't have a need to be efficient with the things that your family needs.
00:20:45.560 | You don't have the need to be efficient.
00:20:47.940 | You don't have the need to run everything at the razor thin line.
00:20:51.400 | It's easy enough for you to keep half a dozen packs of toilet paper in the garage and that's
00:20:58.240 | your buffer.
00:20:59.960 | Well half a dozen big things of toilet paper from Costco will last you for a long time.
00:21:04.280 | And so you just put that on a shelf out in the garage, take one down, replace it.
00:21:08.640 | And that way you've always got a half of a, you know, six, half a dozen cases of toilet
00:21:13.860 | paper as your personal buffer.
00:21:17.000 | Doesn't cost you much, takes a little bit of storage space, but it protects you when
00:21:21.680 | there's a toilet paper crisis of 2020.
00:21:25.540 | So you protect yourself by stocking up.
00:21:28.760 | Same thing with food, same thing with medicine.
00:21:31.280 | You put the buffer in there because you don't need to be efficient.
00:21:35.160 | The needs of your family with most of these things are very, very small.
00:21:38.600 | I think the mask situation is another good example.
00:21:43.160 | You can just simply see that people who are in those situations, imagine the pressure
00:21:48.440 | that's on a hospital administrator.
00:21:50.120 | The hospital administrator knows that we need to stockpile personal protective equipment
00:21:54.200 | for our workers.
00:21:56.560 | But that stockpile comes with a cost.
00:21:59.680 | And you know that it's possible that someday there could be a flu pandemic or someday there
00:22:04.920 | could be a contagious disease outbreak and we need to have lots of extra masks to protect
00:22:09.560 | the patients and protect ourselves, et cetera.
00:22:12.080 | And so they can stockpile large amounts of it, but the stuff expires, it goes bad.
00:22:16.160 | And so are you really going to feel good as a hospital administrator putting this stuff
00:22:20.120 | on year after year after year in very large amounts that have to be stored, that have
00:22:25.040 | to be cared for, that have to be rotated and then just seeing the stuff expire year after
00:22:28.660 | year after year?
00:22:29.980 | And so eventually you say, "Oh, let's get by with a little bit less, a little bit less,
00:22:33.240 | a little bit less."
00:22:34.840 | And then the supply chain narrows down to one region of the world.
00:22:38.200 | There was a book that was written by the guy that was on Joe Rogan's show having a talk
00:22:44.120 | about this and he talked about how 80% of the blood, was it the blood?
00:22:48.080 | The IV bags were produced in Puerto Rico.
00:22:51.120 | And when the hurricane came through Puerto Rico, it devastated those factories and led
00:22:57.700 | to a real global shortage of IV bags.
00:23:03.440 | But a hospital administrator has to worry about that and there's a pressure to press
00:23:06.340 | towards efficiency, got to be efficient, can't stockpile too much stuff because it's just
00:23:10.520 | a huge amount of money.
00:23:12.080 | But that's not you.
00:23:13.440 | You can stockpile the stuff and it not be a big deal.
00:23:15.920 | You can stockpile masks.
00:23:17.940 | You can stockpile personal protective equipment.
00:23:21.240 | You can stockpile hazmat suits.
00:23:23.080 | You can stockpile all of that stuff.
00:23:25.600 | And in the grand scheme of your finances, it's not a big financial cost.
00:23:31.040 | It's an annoyance to store.
00:23:33.220 | It is a cost of storage but it's not a big financial cost.
00:23:36.640 | And storage, as long as you've got a way to do it in an organized way, it's not that big.
00:23:40.720 | So what can you do right now?
00:23:43.260 | Right now, I think it's early to start talking about big opportunities.
00:23:50.320 | I think it's very, very early to start talking about economic opportunities.
00:23:53.880 | And so I'll try in the future to just talk about some ways to profit from an event.
00:24:00.040 | I do want you just to keep your head up and to stay focused on being positive.
00:24:06.440 | And I don't mean that in some kind of woo-woo ignore reality.
00:24:09.180 | But what I do mean is be realistic.
00:24:11.400 | If you go back and you study times of great panic, times of great crisis, there are always
00:24:17.440 | opportunities.
00:24:19.520 | And many people make their fortunes during a time of crisis.
00:24:27.480 | So we shouldn't be scared about crisis.
00:24:30.360 | It happens.
00:24:32.320 | But if you'll keep a level head on your shoulders, look for opportunities, there will be opportunities.
00:24:38.880 | We don't know yet what those are.
00:24:40.240 | We're just getting started.
00:24:41.920 | It's going to be, in my opinion, it's going to be a long and slow crisis.
00:24:47.680 | And you are going to get so annoyed.
00:24:49.600 | And I'm not going to turn radical personal finance into COVID central.
00:24:52.760 | I already feel like I've done it too much.
00:24:55.720 | We're not going to sit around here and talk about it all the time.
00:24:58.440 | Talk about it on occasion.
00:24:59.440 | But this is going to be a long and slow crisis.
00:25:03.080 | It's going to grind on for months and months and months before it stabilizes.
00:25:08.640 | And we'll see what's on the other side.
00:25:09.880 | I'm not going to make too many predictions beyond that, just that it's going to be very
00:25:13.320 | slow.
00:25:14.320 | You're going to be so tired of it.
00:25:15.480 | I'm going to be so tired of it.
00:25:17.560 | But what can you do right now?
00:25:19.360 | Well, the most useful, valuable thing you can do right now is isolate yourself and your
00:25:25.560 | family.
00:25:28.760 | I think it's time to do that.
00:25:31.120 | Isolate yourself and your family.
00:25:33.040 | Now that's going to be hard to figure out how to do it and what exactly that means,
00:25:37.720 | to what extent you can do.
00:25:38.800 | And all of us have different circumstances.
00:25:41.320 | I'm traveling right now.
00:25:42.480 | I'm just hoping I can get home.
00:25:44.440 | And if I can get home, then I'll hunker down with my family and hopefully I don't get sick
00:25:50.900 | in the airport.
00:25:51.900 | I did my best to take precautions, but who knows.
00:25:55.480 | But isolate yourself and your family, and especially older family members.
00:26:00.680 | Isolate yourself and your family so that you can protect older family members, especially
00:26:06.120 | for the coming weeks.
00:26:08.120 | As things start to, we're right at the start, as I, in my opinion, we're right at the start
00:26:12.880 | of the compound growth curve in the United States.
00:26:15.640 | And what's been happening is the virus has been percolating out across the community,
00:26:20.680 | spreading from thousands and thousands of people to thousands and thousands of more
00:26:24.080 | people.
00:26:25.080 | But now those symptoms are going to start to be seen.
00:26:28.360 | And you have a complete and total debacle of undiagnosed cases, lack of testing.
00:26:34.160 | It's almost impossible for people to get testing, and this is just enhancing the spread.
00:26:38.360 | And the United States reacted far too slowly of closing things, shutting things down, too
00:26:44.000 | little too late.
00:26:45.340 | And so there are thousands and thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of people right
00:26:49.440 | now who are infected all across the United States.
00:26:52.400 | And so I would say that what's needed right now is simply take the action early to isolate
00:26:59.840 | yourself.
00:27:00.840 | Isolate, especially if you're elderly, especially if you have underlying health conditions that
00:27:06.040 | weaken your immune system.
00:27:07.800 | Take the action now to isolate yourself as much as you can, as much as you're willing
00:27:13.020 | to do.
00:27:14.200 | And give it a few more weeks to start to stabilize, to see what happens, and to start to get a
00:27:19.120 | better idea of the risks, a better idea of the numbers, and see if we can get ahead of
00:27:24.920 | it.
00:27:26.320 | I think that's important.
00:27:29.200 | That's the most reliable thing that you can do.
00:27:34.040 | Now you may not be able to go all the way.
00:27:36.680 | Right now, companies that can, you know, there was just a moment ago, Twitter is now ordering
00:27:42.180 | all of their workers to work from home.
00:27:43.960 | If you can work from home, you should.
00:27:47.040 | If you can minimize that stuff, you should.
00:27:50.040 | And remember, in order for isolation to work, you got to do it early before it really seems
00:27:54.980 | like it has to be done.
00:27:59.480 | Maybe I shouldn't have traveled.
00:28:00.480 | I don't know.
00:28:01.480 | We'll find out.
00:28:02.480 | Maybe I'll be sick in a week.
00:28:03.480 | But you got to do it early.
00:28:05.280 | So it's going to feel stupid.
00:28:07.960 | I was talking with my wife.
00:28:11.320 | What are we going to do?
00:28:12.320 | It's going to feel stupid because you're going to look around and say, "There's not really
00:28:15.760 | any need for it."
00:28:17.160 | But that's the right time to do it.
00:28:21.000 | Cancel community events.
00:28:22.160 | I think at this point it's a good idea to cancel travel, etc., and just simply focus
00:28:29.040 | on isolating yourself.
00:28:31.120 | Now, there are opportunities, though, to make that a positive thing, to make plans.
00:28:38.760 | You probably had a long list of goals and things that you've been wanting to accomplish
00:28:43.080 | that you haven't had a chance to accomplish because you've been so busy.
00:28:46.840 | Maybe you wanted to work out more.
00:28:49.040 | YouTube is your friend.
00:28:50.880 | There are thousands and thousands of people who've made workout videos that don't require
00:28:54.960 | any equipment.
00:28:55.960 | You can do them right at home.
00:28:57.240 | Pop a video on and start getting fit right at home.
00:29:00.140 | You probably wanted to read more.
00:29:02.000 | Well, Amazon still ships.
00:29:04.400 | You can buy books or you can get the digital book and then you don't even have to interact
00:29:07.880 | with the paper book and you can start reading.
00:29:10.240 | You probably wanted to, I don't know, start a podcast, start a YouTube channel.
00:29:14.200 | Guess what?
00:29:15.200 | You got a cell phone.
00:29:16.200 | Watch Cell Phone Start It and get started.
00:29:18.620 | You probably wanted to go to school.
00:29:20.720 | One of the greatest things that's going to happen is a boon in distance learning.
00:29:25.400 | Right now you could sign up at about any university and take online classes and that's going to
00:29:30.400 | be a big opportunity right now.
00:29:33.480 | So think about ways that you can do some things you wanted to do.
00:29:37.040 | You probably wanted to hang out with your children.
00:29:39.200 | You probably wanted to, you're thinking about a family vacation.
00:29:42.680 | Well take the family vacation but go to a national park instead of going to a theme
00:29:49.000 | park.
00:29:50.480 | Go camping instead of going to a theme park or going to the places that are full.
00:29:55.080 | Take everyone to the beach and go play in the water instead of going to downtown and
00:29:59.880 | find something you can do.
00:30:01.040 | You can do that kind of stuff without interacting with a lot of other people.
00:30:03.480 | So buy some board games and invest in time with your children.
00:30:08.120 | I've always thought, what if I went to prison?
00:30:12.080 | What would I do?
00:30:13.080 | I thought, okay, pretend Joshua, you get sent to prison for 10 years.
00:30:15.720 | What would you do?
00:30:16.840 | And I've often thought, well, I'd get a PhD.
00:30:19.520 | Here's all these things.
00:30:20.520 | I'd get super fit.
00:30:21.520 | I'd be jacked and playing basketball all day.
00:30:24.080 | I mean, so just think about that.
00:30:26.080 | What if you went to prison?
00:30:27.080 | In this case, the prison is your home.
00:30:29.360 | You got a chance to hang out there.
00:30:31.840 | Maybe you write.
00:30:32.840 | Write a book.
00:30:33.840 | Write a novel.
00:30:34.840 | Do something.
00:30:35.840 | There are ways to do from it.
00:30:36.840 | We'll talk in the days to come about the economic effects, about ways to profit from it as those
00:30:42.300 | things start to emerge.
00:30:43.720 | I'm not confident at this point.
00:30:45.600 | I think we're just at the very beginning and it's going to be a long, slow road.
00:30:49.000 | Those are my thoughts.
00:30:51.520 | I hope it helps you in some way.
00:30:55.840 | Pay attention to the news.
00:30:57.080 | Pay attention to the risks.
00:30:58.480 | Keep your head on straight.
00:31:03.080 | Don't freak out, but don't stick your head under the rock either.
00:31:08.080 | At the very least, pay attention to the human psychology because that's what you're seeing
00:31:14.200 | right now is in some ways the very predictable human psychology of panic and groupthink.
00:31:24.120 | It's making a difference.
00:31:25.680 | Talk to you soon.
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