Great-Coronavirus-News-All-Around
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00:00:30.800 | - Welcome to Radical Personal Finance,
00:00:32.000 | a show dedicated to providing you with the knowledge,
00:00:33.680 | skills, insight, and encouragement you need
00:00:35.760 | to live a rich and meaningful life now,
00:00:37.920 | while building a plan for financial freedom
00:00:39.400 | in 10 years or less.
00:00:41.320 | Today on the show, current events show, big news.
00:00:44.160 | Buckle your seat belts,
00:00:45.360 | get ready for a shocking announcement
00:00:47.840 | coming up in three,
00:00:50.800 | two,
00:00:51.880 | one.
00:00:53.900 | I shaved my beard.
00:00:58.000 | More importantly, or put more accurately, I guess,
00:01:00.200 | I shaved my quarantine beard.
00:01:02.540 | And although perhaps you are going to wax nostalgic
00:01:09.080 | for the three inches of manly,
00:01:12.800 | utterly masculine, lumberjackish good looks
00:01:15.760 | hanging off of my face,
00:01:17.820 | my shaving my beard is vaguely symbolic
00:01:22.120 | of the change in my mindset
00:01:23.520 | with regard to the current COVID-19 pandemic.
00:01:27.320 | And I thought that would be interesting to talk through.
00:01:28.840 | It's been a while since we've talked about the pandemic,
00:01:31.040 | where I think we are, where I think we're going.
00:01:32.920 | So let me just share with you a few of my opinions,
00:01:35.640 | and you can consider them for yourselves.
00:01:37.520 | But I think we are, on a global basis,
00:01:41.160 | I think we are changing course right now
00:01:45.240 | with the COVID pandemic.
00:01:47.000 | I think that we are,
00:01:49.120 | it's not the beginning of the end in some way.
00:01:51.320 | There's still a lot of deaths ahead of us.
00:01:54.120 | There's still a lot of effects ahead of us, et cetera.
00:01:56.840 | But I think we're definitely entering the next phase,
00:01:59.640 | which leads to the end in some way of this pandemic.
00:02:04.640 | I wanna share with you why I think that
00:02:06.640 | and what it might mean for the coming weeks,
00:02:09.640 | months, et cetera.
00:02:11.480 | There are three major reasons
00:02:14.440 | why I think we're entering the next phase.
00:02:18.400 | The first major reason is at this point in time,
00:02:20.580 | we have fairly good data
00:02:22.960 | on the effects of the coronavirus disease,
00:02:27.960 | of the virus itself.
00:02:31.080 | And that data comes from around the world,
00:02:32.920 | from a variety of reputable sources.
00:02:36.760 | Because this coronavirus began in China,
00:02:41.000 | and because that was the source
00:02:42.960 | of most of the initial medical data,
00:02:46.360 | it was very hard to place confidence in that data.
00:02:49.520 | The Chinese government has a long reputation
00:02:52.880 | of concealing data, of flat out lying about the data,
00:02:57.620 | manipulating data, and they certainly did the same thing
00:03:00.660 | in this pandemic that they have done in previous pandemics.
00:03:03.320 | And so any kind of data that the Chinese government released
00:03:07.780 | was viewed with suspicion, not as automatically wrong,
00:03:10.400 | but it was viewed with suspicion.
00:03:12.240 | And in the early days of the virus,
00:03:13.560 | there were, the internet was awash
00:03:15.760 | with conspiracy theories and videos
00:03:18.640 | and people falling on the streets,
00:03:20.200 | and it was just very, very difficult
00:03:21.560 | to get a good information.
00:03:23.280 | And I think with good reason,
00:03:25.480 | most observers watched and very thoughtfully
00:03:28.720 | and suspiciously looked at the data and said,
00:03:31.200 | "This may be true, but we don't know yet."
00:03:33.680 | And in fact, much of it was manipulated
00:03:36.280 | and much of it was also just, it was too early, right?
00:03:39.240 | There wasn't enough data collected.
00:03:41.120 | Then as the virus began to be seen around the world
00:03:44.400 | and registered, the data continued to be difficult
00:03:47.740 | to come by because there wasn't enough of it.
00:03:50.200 | But at this point in time, six months in,
00:03:53.080 | in the Western world, nine months in, on a global basis,
00:03:57.720 | at this point in time, we've got pretty good data
00:04:00.820 | about the coronavirus infection.
00:04:04.360 | And thankfully, although the sickness is significant
00:04:09.360 | for many people, we know that a massive percentage
00:04:12.960 | of people who are infected with the COVID-19 virus
00:04:16.240 | are non-symptomatic.
00:04:17.880 | We also know that the case fatality rate
00:04:20.860 | and the infection fatality rates are quite low.
00:04:24.280 | The current best estimates of the infection fatality rate
00:04:28.400 | from prominent, leading, reputable medical sources
00:04:33.400 | is that the infection fatality rate is probably something
00:04:37.700 | between 0.3 and 0.5%, about 0.4%, something like that.
00:04:42.700 | So fewer than a half a percent of the people
00:04:45.920 | who are infected with the virus will end up dying
00:04:49.840 | of the virus.
00:04:51.560 | Now that's on a broad basis, but when you account it
00:04:56.560 | for age and for physical condition, we know that it's very,
00:05:02.000 | the deaths are vastly skewed towards older people
00:05:06.040 | with multiple comorbidities.
00:05:07.960 | So in essence, the virus deeply impacts
00:05:11.200 | and heavily impacts people who are old and who are sick,
00:05:14.480 | but people who are not old and or not sick, not unhealthy,
00:05:18.880 | have fewer impacts.
00:05:21.040 | And the dire concerns that many of us had for quite a while
00:05:25.280 | don't look to be having the,
00:05:29.480 | they don't look to be coming true,
00:05:30.660 | which is really, really a wonderful blessing.
00:05:33.160 | In addition, the death rate seems to be continuing to fall.
00:05:38.080 | Now, why?
00:05:39.040 | It's unclear.
00:05:40.360 | Perhaps the virus is weakening.
00:05:41.820 | Perhaps it's already gone through
00:05:43.640 | the most vulnerable populations.
00:05:45.360 | We don't know, but it's anticipated
00:05:47.720 | that that infection fatality rate number
00:05:49.760 | will actually continue to decrease.
00:05:52.160 | So there's very good reason to be less concerned
00:05:55.640 | about the effects of the virus than we once were.
00:05:59.860 | And I think this is something really worth noting
00:06:03.680 | and being very, very grateful for,
00:06:06.120 | because it could be a lot worse.
00:06:08.120 | It could have been a lot worse.
00:06:10.080 | Viral pandemics are very common.
00:06:12.580 | Every year, there's a viral flu pandemic.
00:06:14.960 | And so the word pandemic is not in and of itself
00:06:18.000 | something that only happens occasionally.
00:06:19.440 | It happens every year.
00:06:21.200 | But a really bad viral pandemic is certainly uncommon.
00:06:25.760 | And so it's nice to know that this one,
00:06:28.440 | while significant, this one is not,
00:06:32.320 | it's not the end of the world scenario.
00:06:34.000 | It's not the thing you write a good dystopian novel about.
00:06:36.840 | The deaths, the total global deaths,
00:06:41.600 | when put into context of other maladies,
00:06:45.900 | of other causes of death, are overall quite low.
00:06:50.460 | And so that is very, very encouraging.
00:06:53.880 | And I think that as that medical data is now seen
00:06:56.580 | and now understood, I think more and more people
00:07:00.820 | every week are basically saying,
00:07:03.280 | "I've got to get on with my life.
00:07:04.580 | "I'm not gonna sit back and be concerned about it."
00:07:07.820 | And that's certainly what has changed in my mind.
00:07:10.500 | I was nervous at the beginning until more data came out
00:07:13.800 | about, I don't wanna go out and get sick,
00:07:17.580 | but I was nervous in the beginning
00:07:19.620 | until more data came out to see
00:07:21.180 | what is the actual strength of this virus,
00:07:23.140 | what actually happened.
00:07:23.980 | I had friends who got sick and they said,
00:07:25.420 | "Of course it was significant."
00:07:27.180 | But at this point in time, you can't go through your life
00:07:31.980 | worrying about a virus that has such a low fatality rate
00:07:37.820 | and that has so many people who experience it
00:07:42.820 | completely asymptomatically.
00:07:44.580 | It's just a bad gamble to be worried about that.
00:07:48.600 | My heart goes out to people who have comorbidities,
00:07:50.500 | who are older, who are sick, et cetera.
00:07:52.580 | It's a much harder decision for them.
00:07:54.780 | But for those of us who are healthy,
00:07:56.580 | I can't sit around, I'm not gonna sit around
00:07:59.940 | and just sit in my house and look for the future
00:08:05.140 | and wish for some magical thing to change in the future.
00:08:08.260 | Now, I would have made that decision about three months ago
00:08:11.060 | if I didn't have the luxury of working from home.
00:08:14.060 | It's a great luxury to be able to work from home.
00:08:16.340 | And so I've been able to maintain an isolated lifestyle
00:08:19.820 | without much difficulty.
00:08:22.380 | If I couldn't do that with my work situation,
00:08:25.020 | I would have come to that decision three months ago
00:08:27.880 | because three months ago,
00:08:28.720 | the data was increasingly pointing in that direction.
00:08:33.020 | And there are things that are more important
00:08:35.660 | than your physical health at times
00:08:37.380 | where you simply have to provide for your family.
00:08:39.060 | You have to do what you need to do.
00:08:41.140 | And so I think that collectively,
00:08:42.840 | I see many, many people coming to that same conclusion
00:08:45.660 | and I see good, solid evidence
00:08:48.020 | as to why that's a justifiable conclusion.
00:08:50.540 | Number two reason I think that we're coming to that,
00:08:53.300 | that conclusion would be there are major improvements
00:08:57.100 | in treatments for the COVID infection.
00:09:02.460 | As I sketched out six months ago,
00:09:05.860 | when you're looking at a pandemic,
00:09:07.540 | what you're looking for is you're looking for an off-ramp.
00:09:10.380 | And those off-ramps are a few different,
00:09:13.220 | there are a few off-ramps that you've got to watch for.
00:09:15.860 | One off-ramp is this is not such a bad disease.
00:09:19.100 | And although I wouldn't say this is not a bad disease,
00:09:23.500 | I would say that increasingly it's less bad than feared.
00:09:27.060 | You know, these words that are subjective,
00:09:28.500 | it's hard to know what to say,
00:09:30.820 | but it's less bad than previously feared.
00:09:33.620 | And so that off-ramp is,
00:09:35.860 | you can see that off-ramp has come,
00:09:37.580 | it is coming, it has come, it will come,
00:09:39.980 | that it's not as bad as we previously feared.
00:09:42.420 | Another major off-ramp to end the pandemic
00:09:44.940 | was improvement in therapeutic solutions.
00:09:48.740 | Does the medical staff, does the medical community
00:09:51.420 | have treatments available that are effective?
00:09:55.960 | And increasingly the answer is yes,
00:09:57.880 | as the medical community gets more experienced
00:10:00.380 | with the sickness,
00:10:01.420 | as they get more experienced with treating it,
00:10:02.980 | then they become increasingly skilled
00:10:05.140 | at treating that particular illness.
00:10:06.860 | And so we see that,
00:10:07.740 | we see it's one of the reasons why we see
00:10:09.540 | a lowering infection fatality rate.
00:10:11.140 | We see that the medical community
00:10:12.420 | is increasingly skilled with treating it.
00:10:14.560 | Now, there's also even just more and more interesting data.
00:10:17.660 | First, there's new technologies,
00:10:19.020 | there's plasma, blood plasma treatments,
00:10:21.540 | and innovative things, but even just drug treatments.
00:10:25.260 | I was fascinated to see,
00:10:26.780 | it's been such an interesting debate
00:10:28.440 | on the hydroxychloroquine debate,
00:10:30.440 | because the hydroxychloroquine debate has been crazy
00:10:33.920 | in terms of how it has all emerged
00:10:39.920 | in terms of a political controversy
00:10:42.960 | and people advocating that this treatment,
00:10:45.200 | that treatment, et cetera.
00:10:46.480 | But I was interested, last week I was watching,
00:10:49.400 | I watch, there's a YouTube researcher named Dr. John Campbell
00:10:52.000 | that I enjoy getting his input on the medical details.
00:10:57.340 | He has a YouTube channel,
00:10:58.640 | just a guy who turned on a camera
00:10:59.880 | who was in the right place at the right time,
00:11:01.880 | long time nursing professor,
00:11:04.200 | was a nurse in the field for many years,
00:11:06.160 | and turned on his camera
00:11:07.560 | and started giving medical updates,
00:11:08.960 | which are of course extremely valuable.
00:11:11.440 | And in his discussions,
00:11:14.160 | he recently did an analysis of the hydroxychloroquine debate
00:11:16.800 | and showed some new research,
00:11:18.800 | which basically shows significant efficacy
00:11:22.720 | for hydroxychloroquine if delivered in the right dosage.
00:11:26.560 | And the debate seems to be majorly influenced by two things.
00:11:31.560 | Number one is what goes with the hydroxychloroquine treatment
00:11:35.920 | the zinc or azithromycin, whether that accompanies it.
00:11:39.780 | And then the more important thing, however,
00:11:41.340 | seems to be just simply going with low doses.
00:11:43.540 | And many of the big studies,
00:11:44.760 | the WHO study and whatnot,
00:11:46.840 | seem to just be doing this mega dosing of hydroxychloroquine
00:11:51.320 | far higher than the previous recommendations
00:11:53.740 | for the use of the drug.
00:11:55.040 | And yet that overdosing
00:12:00.040 | caused it to be completely ineffective.
00:12:02.280 | And so when delivered in the proper lower doses,
00:12:04.960 | then the drug is actually quite effective,
00:12:07.320 | cutting the death rate by something like 30%
00:12:09.580 | for people with the disease.
00:12:11.560 | And that was one of the other debates,
00:12:13.040 | is it helpful in the early stages,
00:12:15.640 | is it helpful in the later stages?
00:12:17.040 | This was debated and discussed,
00:12:18.440 | but the latest reputable research seems to show that yes,
00:12:23.020 | it's effective for people with the disease
00:12:25.920 | and has a significant impact on the death rate,
00:12:28.280 | which is very encouraging.
00:12:29.920 | And so things like that are a big, big deal
00:12:32.340 | because a drug like hydroxychloroquine,
00:12:35.240 | what was always so helpful
00:12:36.960 | and so potentially valuable about it
00:12:38.880 | is it's an open market drug, there's no patents on it.
00:12:41.800 | It's very, very cheap.
00:12:42.780 | And so it can be produced and shared
00:12:44.880 | and help to cut the death rate massively around the world
00:12:47.240 | if it does continue to prove out to be an effective therapy
00:12:51.440 | for people with the disease.
00:12:53.920 | And so we see that that off-ramp
00:12:56.460 | is increasingly appearing very, very significantly.
00:12:59.560 | Third off-ramp, of course, was vaccines.
00:13:03.600 | Is there development of vaccine?
00:13:04.800 | Of course, vaccines are being tried all around the world.
00:13:08.220 | The results on that are still early,
00:13:09.840 | but certainly there's a major, major push on all fronts
00:13:13.700 | to develop a vaccine.
00:13:15.340 | And it'll be interesting to watch and see,
00:13:17.960 | but I don't think it's necessary.
00:13:19.320 | My personal opinion at this point,
00:13:21.040 | I don't think it's necessary to stop and wait for a vaccine.
00:13:23.600 | And so with these developments,
00:13:25.240 | we see these off-ramps coming where the worst case,
00:13:27.840 | this is not the worst case scenario.
00:13:29.620 | This is not the end of the world as we know it virus.
00:13:32.240 | And these off-ramps are significantly,
00:13:34.360 | significantly brightening in terms of this is working
00:13:38.240 | and we're getting on top of it,
00:13:39.680 | which is just great news, great news.
00:13:42.280 | The final thing I think you see
00:13:44.200 | is you see that the economic inability
00:13:47.640 | to continue with the lockdowns.
00:13:49.440 | I have been very, very encouraged to see
00:13:52.920 | that the economic effects have been far less
00:13:55.640 | than I thought they were.
00:13:56.760 | I think this is important to factor into our mindset
00:14:00.440 | for the future.
00:14:01.940 | If you were to go back 30 years
00:14:04.960 | and go and put this virus on the table
00:14:06.880 | the way that it is being experienced now, just 30 years,
00:14:10.320 | the economic impacts would have been so much harder.
00:14:14.680 | But our ability to communicate from the palm of our hand,
00:14:19.040 | our mobile devices, from anywhere in the world
00:14:22.160 | has allowed us to genuinely do a good job
00:14:24.960 | of keeping productive in many circumstances,
00:14:28.560 | even through the middle of this pandemic.
00:14:30.640 | And so the economic impacts, while severe,
00:14:33.580 | are less severe than I feared.
00:14:36.520 | And so it certainly does not look like
00:14:38.400 | a worst case scenario.
00:14:39.560 | It's gonna take a while to work through it all,
00:14:41.940 | but it's really encouraging to see that.
00:14:44.360 | And so I'm filled with optimism,
00:14:46.960 | even just about the moderated economic effects.
00:14:50.440 | And I see this general clamor that people are realizing,
00:14:53.480 | like, we've got to stay at work.
00:14:54.920 | We've got to go back to work.
00:14:56.880 | My bigger concern's just been,
00:14:58.600 | it's been shocking to see how many governments
00:15:02.440 | have locked things down medically,
00:15:07.340 | which has had dire effects on so many people,
00:15:11.440 | and yet there seems to be no recourse.
00:15:13.040 | And so I think this is gonna lead to increasing periods
00:15:15.640 | of political instability in the coming years,
00:15:17.440 | people realize how vulnerable they are
00:15:19.760 | to authoritarian governments.
00:15:21.660 | And who knows, right?
00:15:23.900 | We'll be debating this for a long time
00:15:26.000 | as the data continues to be clarified,
00:15:29.400 | and we compare and say, well,
00:15:31.880 | the Australian government is locking people in prison,
00:15:34.560 | yet this government over here didn't.
00:15:36.000 | What happened?
00:15:36.840 | And it's gonna be a debate for many, many years,
00:15:38.880 | and we won't know for many years how this pairs out.
00:15:42.140 | But in my personal perspective,
00:15:45.200 | I'm increasingly filled with optimism.
00:15:48.280 | So I shaved my beard, and basically,
00:15:52.080 | to the extent that I'm able,
00:15:53.480 | I'm getting back to normal life,
00:15:56.360 | to the extent that I am able.
00:15:58.640 | Of course, many of us still live under mask laws and rules,
00:16:03.200 | and those things are important.
00:16:04.880 | The next big unknown is gonna be what happens
00:16:07.480 | as the Western Hemisphere goes into the wintertime.
00:16:11.800 | Generally, most people, I think,
00:16:14.560 | would expect increasing resurgence of the virus
00:16:17.800 | as cold weather comes into play.
00:16:21.600 | That's certainly possible.
00:16:22.920 | I think there are many reasons for it.
00:16:24.960 | Maybe the cold weather,
00:16:26.080 | the virus becomes more resilient in cold weather, maybe.
00:16:28.560 | But there are other good reasons,
00:16:29.520 | just to think less ventilation is a big one.
00:16:32.320 | If people start to, in the wintertime,
00:16:34.560 | they shut their houses down,
00:16:36.080 | indoor gatherings start to become more prominent,
00:16:38.520 | people get tired of social distancing,
00:16:41.280 | more contact.
00:16:42.320 | We can expect increasing rates of infection.
00:16:45.320 | We can certainly expect
00:16:46.600 | significantly increasing rates of infection
00:16:48.600 | as schools open up and as workplaces open up more and more.
00:16:53.600 | That's totally expected.
00:16:56.360 | But I think in general,
00:16:59.120 | probably see that death rate keep low, and we'll see.
00:17:01.760 | I'm not a medical expert.
00:17:02.960 | I just try to watch and think it through.
00:17:05.640 | And so, on the whole,
00:17:08.040 | even though we'll see as we get into the fall weather
00:17:10.920 | in the Western Hemisphere, we'll see what happens,
00:17:13.520 | but I'm optimistic about the whole thing.
00:17:15.960 | So, what does that mean for you?
00:17:18.160 | I don't know, obviously.
00:17:19.760 | I'm just sharing what it means for me,
00:17:21.160 | is that for me, I'm back able to plan.
00:17:23.320 | I'm trying to plan for the future
00:17:24.720 | and get things going and get back into a normal swing.
00:17:29.720 | I've got a lot of lessons
00:17:32.440 | that I've learned from this experience.
00:17:35.400 | I think more than anything,
00:17:36.240 | it's how much you value your social contact with people.
00:17:41.240 | I think we see how important that has been for our lives,
00:17:45.560 | for our brains, just for us to function well.
00:17:49.440 | And the people I'm most concerned about are elderly people.
00:17:52.800 | I think this virus and the response has wrought a heavy toll
00:17:57.800 | that's going to take years to play out
00:18:02.840 | among elderly people who are isolated,
00:18:05.480 | filled with fear many times,
00:18:07.720 | and just isolated from social contact.
00:18:09.600 | It's very, very, very difficult on them.
00:18:13.640 | But I think that on the whole,
00:18:15.520 | I expect things to get better from here.
00:18:19.640 | I do think the thing that is worth watching,
00:18:22.520 | I think there's gonna be political instability
00:18:24.720 | that's a fallout from this for a while,
00:18:26.880 | as there's a reckoning with who happened to be right
00:18:29.840 | and who happened to be wrong in the moment.
00:18:32.440 | And so we'll see.
00:18:34.560 | But I don't expect that to be a big problem
00:18:36.960 | on a broad, globalized perspective.
00:18:39.360 | Certainly, as the bills come due
00:18:45.720 | of massive deficit spending in many governments
00:18:48.400 | and major declines in economic productivity,
00:18:51.960 | major declines in tax revenues, et cetera,
00:18:55.360 | that's gonna be an interesting and important thing
00:18:57.920 | for us to study and watch in the days to come.
00:19:00.320 | But on the whole, my general feeling at this point
00:19:03.120 | is just a sense of optimism.
00:19:04.480 | I feel like we dodged a bullet.
00:19:06.960 | We dodged the worst case scenario.
00:19:09.200 | And I'm really, really happy about that.
00:19:12.680 | I think that's really, really encouraging.
00:19:15.880 | And we can be thankful for that.
00:19:18.480 | Living through this experience,
00:19:20.360 | when I was younger,
00:19:21.400 | I used to really want to go through a hurricane.
00:19:25.520 | There's this boyish enthusiasm for something being crazy,
00:19:28.480 | and it's a bad event,
00:19:30.240 | and you really wanna go through a hurricane.
00:19:32.600 | And I remember the first hurricane I went through,
00:19:37.520 | and it was so exciting.
00:19:39.240 | The wind is blowing, the rain is lashing your house,
00:19:42.480 | everything is howling,
00:19:43.440 | you're seeing stuff get blown down the street,
00:19:45.800 | and it was so exciting.
00:19:46.800 | For a boy who doesn't have property to worry about,
00:19:49.440 | who doesn't have any concerns about money,
00:19:51.600 | it's just exciting to go through a hurricane.
00:19:53.920 | But then, in the wake of the hurricane,
00:19:57.280 | you look around, and it's just days of misery.
00:20:00.680 | The electricity's out,
00:20:01.840 | you got no air conditioning,
00:20:03.360 | you're cleaning up branches and trees
00:20:05.280 | and trying to get your house back,
00:20:06.440 | and it's hot and it's sticky,
00:20:07.560 | and you can't sleep, and it's just misery.
00:20:09.760 | And finally, like,
00:20:10.720 | I don't ever wanna go through a hurricane again.
00:20:12.760 | And I kinda feel like the same thing applies
00:20:15.560 | with the global pandemic.
00:20:17.920 | Now I'm at a point in my maturity
00:20:19.160 | where I don't wish for bad things to happen.
00:20:21.720 | But having thought a lot over the years about bad scenarios,
00:20:24.320 | you think about pandemics,
00:20:25.840 | and you think about what could happen in a bad pandemic,
00:20:28.840 | what has happened, what will probably will happen
00:20:31.520 | in the future at some point.
00:20:33.800 | You think, well, maybe,
00:20:34.640 | well, wouldn't it be interesting to have that happen?
00:20:39.640 | And I remember in the early stages of the pandemic
00:20:42.000 | back in February,
00:20:44.280 | when I was really watching and really concerned,
00:20:46.680 | in March, and in April, I got more concerned.
00:20:49.880 | And there was this, almost this sense of,
00:20:53.440 | I hesitate to use the word
00:20:57.160 | 'cause it comes with such a bad connotation,
00:20:59.040 | but I don't know what other word would work.
00:21:01.040 | But there's this sense of anticipation.
00:21:03.160 | There's this sense of, wow, maybe this is it, right?
00:21:05.760 | Maybe this is the big one.
00:21:07.220 | And you look at it,
00:21:09.600 | and I think, if there were a big one,
00:21:13.600 | this is what it would look like.
00:21:15.600 | And it's kind of this really weird mix of dread
00:21:20.000 | and anticipation, like, well, maybe this is the big one.
00:21:22.800 | At least that's what I experienced.
00:21:25.280 | And so I prepared accordingly,
00:21:27.320 | and then I watched my experiences through it.
00:21:32.320 | Number one, I was certainly,
00:21:34.960 | it became very clear, very quickly,
00:21:36.480 | like, I really hope this isn't the big one.
00:21:39.040 | I don't want this to be the big one.
00:21:40.640 | I really don't wanna go through this right now.
00:21:42.480 | I had a big year planned.
00:21:44.320 | It was gonna be awesome.
00:21:45.520 | I don't wanna go through this.
00:21:47.280 | But of course, we don't get to choose it.
00:21:49.120 | The second thing is I learned a lot
00:21:50.920 | about just the difficulty of decision-making.
00:21:54.160 | And I learned a lot about my own normalcy bias.
00:21:58.640 | I realized how strong my normalcy bias is,
00:22:02.640 | and how my issues, my personal issues,
00:22:06.920 | my personal, the things I struggle with,
00:22:09.520 | just inability to believe what I saw.
00:22:12.560 | And I thought, man, if I'm facing this,
00:22:15.440 | and I've thought about this, I've studied this,
00:22:17.320 | and I've considered what this happens,
00:22:21.400 | what would happen, what will happen,
00:22:22.800 | what could happen, et cetera,
00:22:24.400 | and I'm just wrestling constantly with normalcy bias,
00:22:29.080 | how tough it must be for other people
00:22:30.640 | who haven't thought about this in advance as I did.
00:22:33.400 | And yet still, you're looking at data,
00:22:35.120 | and you're saying, this is what the data says,
00:22:37.040 | and yet I can hardly believe that this is what could happen.
00:22:40.880 | What a powerful thing our normalcy bias really is.
00:22:43.960 | What a powerful, powerful effect that really is.
00:22:48.120 | And so that was fascinating.
00:22:51.000 | The other thing that I just really thought
00:22:52.520 | was interesting was how excruciatingly slow this really is,
00:22:57.520 | how excruciatingly slow a pandemic really is.
00:23:03.000 | I never imagined how slow an economic catastrophe
00:23:08.280 | really can end up being.
00:23:10.440 | And you read, you watch a movie, a dystopian movie,
00:23:15.120 | and there's a nuclear explosion,
00:23:16.480 | or there's something big, and everything happens fast,
00:23:19.240 | and everything collapses fast for the sake of a good story.
00:23:21.680 | And authors do this as well.
00:23:22.840 | Of course, authors have more license,
00:23:24.760 | but if they stretch it out over chapters,
00:23:26.760 | and chapters, and chapters, it's too slow,
00:23:29.080 | and the book falls apart.
00:23:31.000 | But real life, certainly slow is how it has happened,
00:23:34.880 | and how it is happening.
00:23:36.360 | I mean, this is gonna be years in its effect,
00:23:38.760 | and here we are nine months into it,
00:23:42.160 | still talking about how,
00:23:43.400 | well, I'm not sure what the future's gonna hold.
00:23:45.400 | That is nine long months.
00:23:47.960 | And so just the simple boredom with the whole thing,
00:23:50.880 | and the slowness of it all, the dreariness of it all
00:23:55.560 | has been really remarkable to live through.
00:23:57.560 | And I've learned a lot of lessons from that.
00:24:00.160 | I've learned a lot of lessons from that.
00:24:02.960 | And so to wrap up,
00:24:06.160 | there are many reasons to continue to be cautious.
00:24:11.880 | I've been fascinated to see how this is playing out.
00:24:16.080 | And I don't know if I've gotten some things totally wrong,
00:24:19.480 | but at the moment it appears like I've gotten
00:24:21.280 | some things significantly wrong.
00:24:22.600 | For example, I'm watching very closely
00:24:24.600 | the real estate markets,
00:24:25.960 | and I expected, about now and over the coming months,
00:24:30.640 | I still expect this, but I'm wondering if I'm wrong.
00:24:34.280 | I expected there to be major,
00:24:36.380 | major decreases in the real estate markets.
00:24:40.880 | It's just a normal influence,
00:24:42.720 | a normal effect of a recession,
00:24:44.800 | that people lose their jobs, they get laid off,
00:24:47.680 | they start to go behind on their rent,
00:24:49.200 | they start to get evicted,
00:24:50.560 | they start to go behind on their mortgages,
00:24:52.200 | they start to get foreclosed on,
00:24:53.840 | and real estate prices generally decline.
00:24:56.320 | Well, what is happening is in many markets
00:24:59.240 | is the exact opposite of that.
00:25:01.000 | Right now in many, many real estate markets,
00:25:03.240 | demand is through the roof.
00:25:04.720 | Many rural markets, you put a property on the market
00:25:07.440 | and boom, people are snapping it up.
00:25:09.820 | South Florida, where I'm from,
00:25:12.200 | the market has never been hotter.
00:25:14.440 | And so how much of that is New Yorkers moving out?
00:25:17.520 | It has a big, obviously a major influence
00:25:19.680 | in commercial real estate in big cities,
00:25:23.100 | massive plummeting there.
00:25:24.960 | Residential real estate to some degree affected,
00:25:30.240 | but very localized, need to look at the local market.
00:25:33.200 | And so what a fascinating thing.
00:25:35.440 | I didn't expect that.
00:25:37.520 | Well, I guess I could have said it was possible,
00:25:40.120 | but I guess I didn't expect it to be as strong as it is.
00:25:43.000 | And so watching this play out is really, really interesting.
00:25:46.760 | The stock market has been absolutely incredible to watch.
00:25:49.600 | Massive dumping off, then massive fast rebounding.
00:25:55.360 | What an amazing thing to see and to watch and to analyze
00:25:59.120 | and to consider, really, really remarkable.
00:26:02.960 | A lot of lessons that are available for us right now.
00:26:05.320 | So on the whole, I'm studying, I'm learning lessons.
00:26:10.320 | We're doing well.
00:26:12.360 | And I am in my mindset, like I said,
00:26:15.400 | I shaved my beard and I'm a mindset.
00:26:17.400 | I'm back to trying to actually plan for the future.
00:26:22.320 | So that's exciting.
00:26:23.720 | Feels exciting to get off of just pause
00:26:26.000 | and be able to get back to planning for the future.
00:26:28.560 | Travel is opening up, countries are opening up.
00:26:30.920 | I never thought I would miss an airplane and an airport
00:26:33.640 | as much as I have over the last months,
00:26:36.160 | but I'm excited about where we may go.
00:26:38.120 | I still think it's gonna take a while,
00:26:40.240 | but I'm excited about the prospect
00:26:42.320 | of getting back to normal life.
00:26:43.360 | And I would guess you are too.
00:26:44.600 | So those are Joshua's thoughts.
00:26:46.600 | Hope that you enjoy, and I'll be back with you soon.
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