#58 - How To Navigate The Upcoming Depression

**Shaan** (0:10)
What's up, good people? Shaan here. I just recorded an episode with Ishan, who is my producer, editor, right-hand man, who helps me out with all my different projects.
And we talked about coronavirus, and we went through this email that I sent out to, every Sunday night, I send an email out to the rest of the executive team, and it's called 123 And normally, this is private, but for this podcast, I made it public. I talked about what was in the email. It's all about coronavirus.
I gotta warn you, it's a little doom and gloom. It's not the most optimistic podcast, but I think it is interesting, and I think you'll like it. And then around the 40 minute mark, I announced something new. So if you are checking this out, make sure you check out what we announce at the end. I think it's kind of cool. Came up kind of organically, but I like it. We're gonna do it and check that out. Okay, hope you enjoy this episode.
We're all quarantined and we're going crazy, so we wanted to just do a conversation. How are you doing, man?

**Ishan** (1:10)
Could be doing better, but we're surviving day by day, so I'm halfway across the world in Australia, and this is, you know, just it's getting pretty bad here as well, so we're just hoping for the best.

**Shaan** (1:22)
And every part of the world is different right now, right? You've got China, which is sort of like over it, so there's no new cases, or at least that's what they're reporting. And you have some countries that have the situation on lock. You have Italy and Spain, which are sort of, you know, devolving very quickly.
The US which is growing and, you know, by the end of the week, will probably be bigger than China. What's going on in Australia?

**Ishan** (1:43)
Australia so far, a few of the states are going into the stage one of lockdowns. So all non-essential businesses are sort of closing down, supermarkets, hospitals are still up.
So, you know, society is generally in Australia hasn't been responding to it very well. People are still going out. A lot of the bars and restaurants, like just last weekend before the lockdown was completely packed. People are showing up to Bondi Beach swimming and even after the government has urged them to not go there. So, you know, they've been treating it a bit like a meme, but things I think should get better and people should start listening, hopefully.
But yeah, it's it's just I think we're seeing this in waves. We're like, you know, like you said earlier today in the US, two weeks later, we're going to be where you guys are, you know, because there's a lot of inaction happening. And yeah, things are just going to follow suit.

**Shaan** (2:40)
Yeah, unfortunately, this is one of those things where you need to take action before it becomes a big problem, because once it's a big problem, it's too hard to contain.
And, you know, the tragedy of this is there's a certain type of problem. This is this is like a problem, like in your company, you'll have with security or fraud prevention, where you do a whole bunch of work up front and you hope that like nothing happening is a good sign. Like I used to joke with my head of security.
If you know, if we're not talking, things are good. You're doing your job. When I come and we have to talk, that's because there's a problem. And by then it's usually too late. The damage is done. And unfortunately, with something like this, where you have believers and nonbelievers, the problem is, it's a lose-lose. Let's say you don't take action. You don't take action and now the problem strikes and a bunch of people get sick, a bunch of people die, and bad things happen. Let's say everybody took precaution. We locked the whole country down. We stopped travel, business, all this stuff.
And if you succeed in doing that, the virus won't really proliferate. It will look harmless. And then what people would say is actually not a good thing we did that. They'll say it was an overreaction. And so it's like a lose-lose in terms of perception, because if you take massive precaution, the winning scenario makes it look like it wasn't going to be a big problem. And it's a dangerous thing. There should be a word for these types of situations where that's the case. You know, like they have that word. Anti-fragile. Anti-fragile describes when, if you haven't read Nassim Tlaib's book, but anti-fragile is when a system breaks and the break makes the system stronger for the next one. So it's like plane crashes. Every time a plane crash happens, planes get safer. Overall, the next crash is less likely. That's an anti-fragile system.