# Near-term planning for secondary impacts of coronavirus lockdowns [assuming things don't blow up]

In this document, I attempt to discuss the impact of the coronavirus
lockdown and how to prepare for it. This is not focused on the direct
impact of coronavirus, but rather on the secondary impact of
precautions that people are taking, including the lockdowns and the
new normal of staying home and working from home.

The document is written in an imperative tone, focused on what to
do. However, please don't read into this tone the idea that I am
confident of these suggestions and authoritatively pushing them. They
are just ideas!

Many of these ideas are self-justifying, but I have not tried to
justify their *relative importance* to other ideas that I have
omitted. Subject to time constraints, I'll be happy to answer specific
questions challenging the ideas, or comparing them to other ideas I
didn't list. If you have a question of that sort, there's a good
chance I'll just agree that the idea I didn't list was more important.

My initial draft of this post included some discussion of potential
future timelines, but I decided to omit that in order to make the post
focus on ideas for dealing with the situation. I may separately write
about possible futures.

## General ideas

* Expect a **three-month timeline** for the lockdown (i.e., lockdown
  continuing till the end of June), with **the possibility of a
  six-month, twelve-month, or even eighteen-month lockdown**. Even if
  a strict lockdown lasts much less, health advice may still recommend
  that you shelter in place for additional time.
* **Brace for impact! Prepare psychologically.** Plan for three months of
  lockdown; it could be shorter, but it could also be much longer. If
  you overprepare a little bit because the lockdown lasts just one
  month, you'll need to write off the effort, but that'll be less
  painful than forming expectations that this will end in a few weeks
  and then constantly being disappointed at how much it's dragging
  out.
  * It's ideal if all your concrete actions are "no-regret" -- so that
    if the lockdown lasts longer or shorter than you expect, the
    action still gives you some lasting benefit. But this may not
    always be possible.
* **Keep a buffer (material goods, liquid savings, other reserves), but
  don't engage in panic actions to build buffers.**

## Impact on day-to-day life experience

Since we're talking of a three-month timeline for a lockdown (and
possibly much longer), you have to think of a sustainable way to
manage your life. It's not a day or two that you can somehow
brute-force. You need a sustainable approach, and a reasonable
balance. Here are some ideas:

* **Strike the right balance in terms of going out**: It's reasonably safe
  to go out if you stay far from people and don't touch stuff. So,
  make sure to get a reasonable amount of exercise and fresh
  air. Don't stay cooped up in your home for days. Obviously,
  exceptions apply for people who are sick or may have been exposed,
  or if there is legal enforcement of a stricter stay-at-home
  order. Most existing stay-at-home orders, even the strictest
  lockdowns, allow people (who are not old or at risk of already being
  exposed) to go out alone for exercise. In some regions, you may need
  to carry documentation stating that you are going out for exercise.
* **Get the right cadence in terms of purchasing food and necessities**:
  Keep in mind that grocery stores and convenience stores are limiting
  the amount you can buy at a given time. So make sure to make regular
  (though not very frequent) trips to stay stocked up on necessities,
  thinking as far ahead as feasible. Sanitize well before and after
  such trips. If you can make these trips at a time when the stores
  and streets are less crowded, please do that. Again, please make
  sure to comply with any stay-at-home orders, including taking
  appropriate documentation in regions where documentation is
  necessary.
* **Take great care of your health even outside of coronavirus-related
  matters**: It'll be a terrible idea if you need to go to a doctor at
  this time. So, make sure to take good care of your health,
  particularly dental health and any other aspects of health that tend
  to be problematic for you. Make sure to eat healthy and take your
  normal supplements that have a good track record for you.
* **Use scarce goods sparingly.** Here are some illustrative examples; the
  specifics may not make sense in light of your health concerns,
  beliefs about environmental impact, and aesthetics, but they give a
  general idea:
  * If you use paper goods at home (such as paper towels), consider
    using cloth-based substitutes, as long as each person can use
    their own personal cloth: Paper goods are likely to stay in
    shortage, so you want to use yours sparingly if feasible. For
    instance, use cloth towels instead of paper towels for wiping your
    hands, as long as multiple people aren't sharing the same towel.
  * Give preference to handwashing with soap over using hand
    sanitizer. Handwashing is anyway more effective, and soap seems to
    be less in demand than hand sanitizer (likely because of the huge
    demand for hand sanitizer created by businesses offering hand
    sanitizers at workstations). The relative availability of hand
    sanitizer may, however, improve as lockdown continues and business
    use of hand sanitizers slows down.
  * You will need to figue out what other goods are scarce where you
    live and adjust consumption habits accordingly. Please weigh other
    considerations like health, the environment, personal aesthetics, etc.

## Impact on social life and interaction

Staying at home, and refraining from participating in social
activities, is something that could get harder and harder as the time
period gets longer. Some social activities are easy to forgo for a
week, but harder to forgo for three months. I expect that this could
lead to people feeling depression, loneliness, and mental health
issues, with the risks increasing the longer this continues.

A silver lining is that the reduced level of necessary activity, in
particular commuting, may help people recover from months or even
years of hectic commutes.

The balance of these factors will vary from person to person, but I
expect that for most people, the social life impact will be a net
negative.

What can we do? Here are a few thoughts:

* **Exploit the positives**: You can't do some social activities that you
  normally do, but perhaps the shelter-in-place and the saved commute
  time gives you more flexibility and time to do some other things
  you've always wanted to do but never had the bandwidth for. For
  instance, maybe you can spend evenings working on a long-deferred
  personal project, or learn a new skill, instead of being stuck in
  the commute or socially pressured to attend events you don't really
  enjoy. Or maybe you could spend more time with your family (in the
  literal sense, not as a euphemism). Or spend more time online with
  people who don't live near you anyway.
* **Get along better with the people you live with**: You can't escape
  your home to go hang out with others, so you probably need to make
  peace with whoever is next to you, whether that's your family, your
  pets, or random roommates. Appreciate more the time you spend with
  them (with appropriate social distance!) or at any rate, don't get
  into fights, considering that you can't walk out of the house that
  easily.
* **Switch social activities online as much as possible, and plan a
  little bit for them**: If you got a lot of your social energy from
  serendipitious in-person interaction, this will be in short
  supply. Instead, you may have to plan the equivalent online things a
  bit more. In many cases, more conscious planning and coordination
  may be needed. So make sure to plan and push for the online
  equivalents where feasible. This is important because it's likely
  the lockdown will last long enough that completely forgoing some
  kinds of social interactions will be too costly. This may be
  particularly important for group activities that play an important
  role providing emotional support to their members.

## Impact on work life and job security

This mostly applies to jobs where you were previously going into an
office and you're now working from home. It doesn't apply to cases
where you have been fired or furloughed, or where you were always
working from home, or where you still need to go in for the job.

* **Make home station adjustments**: Make adjustments to your home
  environment to make it more feasible to efficiently work from
  home. A lot of people find it helpful to have a physical separation
  of their work station and the rest of their home; if that's feasible
  and desirable for you, consider doing it.
* **Negotiate a new work-life balance**: The previous work-life
  balance you worked out probably needs to be adjusted in light of the
  new situation. For instance, perhaps you can start work earlier or
  end later, but need more breaks within the day to cook food or deal
  with your kid who's also staying at home. Think through the right
  balance that works for you and your employer. This may take a few
  days to figure out.
* **Make sure lines of communication and recognition of your work have
  adjusted to the work-from-home reality**: Even if you're doing just as
  much work as you were doing in the past, your boss or colleagues may
  not realize that. Make sure that the "optics" angle is
  well-covered. The specifics will vary from job to job.
* **Keep in mind that getting a new job may be harder, so try to secure
  yourself in your existing job more**: At least until the lockdown is
  in place, and possibly even for a few more months, switching jobs
  will be hard. So, try as much as possible to get along with your
  existing job. This is true even if your industry isn't directly
  affected in a severe way; for people in industries that are heavily
  affected, the situation is much trickier. NOTE: If you are in a
  heavily affected industry and have an opportuunity to jump to a less
  affected one, consider taking it. But secure the new opportunity
  first before jumping ship.

## Financial impact

* **Give more importance to building a liquid savings buffer**: In my
  [simple financial advice
  doc](https://github.com/vipulnaik/working-drafts/tree/master/simple-financial-advice.md),
  I recommend building liquid savings for about one year. In the
  current climate, I recommend increasing the target to two years,
  and to three if your job or industry is particularly negatively
  affected. In particular, I suggest:
  * Stop contributing to retirement accounts until you have hit the
    increased liquid savings threshold. With that said, if you do have
    more liquid savings than the increased threshold, increasing
    contributions to retirement accounts may be a great idea.
  * Hold off on repaying very-low-interest loans such as student loans
    until you have hit the increased liquid savings threshold (though
    it's best to do calculations for each loan to trade off the
    interest rate against the loss of liquidity).
  * If you are well below your liquid savings threshold, investigate
    how much of your money is in retirement accounts and other funds
    and make contingency plans to liquidate some of it to shore up
    your liquid savings. Liquidating retirement accounts may come with
    a penalty, which is why it's better to store any new money you're
    getting in more liquid forms. So make the plan (to liquidate) and
    be prepared to execute it if you find your net savings rate
    turning negative (due to unexpected income loss or expense
    increases).
* **Beyond the goal of maintaining liquidity to weather you through 2
  to 3 years, don't engage in panic buying or selling of assets**:
  There are arguments in favor of buying and holding in the stock
  market given the lower prices. Evaluate them based on your normal
  criteria.
* **Continue your regular philanthropy and consumer spending**: On a
  similar note, if you engage in regular philanthropy or in consumer
  spending that gives you happiness, continue with it as long as (a)
  it still makes sense in the context of the lockdown, and (b) you
  either already reached or are on the way to your liquid savings
  threshold. In other words, after securing your health and wealth,
  continue your life as close to normal as possible.
  * If, for building your savings, you have a choice between cutting
    down on consumer spending that gives you happiness, versus cutting
    down on putting money into retirement accounts, choose the
    latter. In other words, spend normally, and put less money into
    your retirement account. Saving for retirement can wait for a few
    years; if you don't survive those few years, there is no point
    saving for retirement.

## My reasons for writing this document

* Especially in the rationality community, I've seen a lot of
  [advice](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/B9qzPZDcPwnX6uEpe/coronavirus-justified-practical-advice-summary)
  on protecting oneself against coronavirus, but not as much on
  dealing with the massive social experiment that's being unleashed in
  the effort to do so. I expect the latter to increase in importance
  over time, both if containment efforts are successful, and if they
  aren't.
* Much discussion among the general public about the lockdown seems to
  be along the lines of "hey, we're in uncharted territory, this is
  scary" and isn't reiterating enough what this might mean over time
  periods longer than a week or two. I think what's important is to
  start bracing for an extended period of lockdown, to minimize the
  wave of secondary effects as people get frustrated with the
  lockdown. Preparing people in this way could help make sustained
  containment and social distancing efforts more palatable, and
  mitigate some of the adverse social and economic effects. My post
  is probably a very small contribution, but I hope it pushes
  positively in the general direction.